


Turn and Face the Strange

by ArtemisRae



Series: For the Unknown [9]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Gangs All Here, This is a heavy one kids, Underage Drinking, buckle in, depressive episodes, drinking as a coping mechanism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-06-02 10:28:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 62,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19439587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisRae/pseuds/ArtemisRae
Summary: Time may change meBut I can't trace time(Changes, David Bowie)Dustin, in an effort to feel close to his distant friends, is determined to spend the year they turn 21 celebrating together. El struggles with her mental health, Mike faces his hardest year of school yet, and Will tries to break free from Hawkins.





	1. The Taste was Not So Sweet

**Author's Note:**

> I am so pleased to finally be posting this fic. The initial draft was actually finished last summer - and has gone through three major revisions. In between, I managed a multi-state move for a major new job, so it has been an eventful year so far! I did want to get the first chapter out before season 3 dropped on Thursday.
> 
> Friendly reminder that our universe will be canon through Season 2, though we may choose to use details or characters from future seasons to pad the universe. 
> 
> This is possibly the most ambitious fic I've ever attempted - the front half of this universe has focused so heavily on Mike and El that we needed a fic like this to bring the rest of the Party up to speed. Pay attention to the section headers - the chapters are split into flashbacks and the present day.
> 
> And also, take care of yourselves. This fic deals with some heavy themes as these kids deal with some of the crap they faced when they were young. I feel as though I've tagged appropriately, so please heed the warnings if you have triggers regarding alcohol, depression, or panic attacks.
> 
> Hopefully, if you're reading this fic you've read the other fics in the series. This fic relies heavily on characters and events previously posted - particularly Juxtaposie's Night is Falling, and the Dawn is Calling. It gives you a lot of background on the mental state of El, Mike, and Will that will really help reading this. Plus, it's an amazing fic on it's own, and should be lauded appropriately.

**Chapter 1: The Taste was Not So Sweet**

**Max - September 30**

***

**May 1st, 1988**

****

****

**Junior Year**

They were driving home from New York when his mother dropped a bomb on him, in the form of reminiscing about family.

“Rochester isn’t so bad,” his mother mused. Dustin was watching the landscape pass from the passenger window. “It’s only a seven hour drive. Or you could fly into Indianapolis, that’s not too bad either.”

“Yeah…” Dustin thought about it. The University of Rochester was a nice campus, and had a good biology program, and it was the closest of all the colleges to which he was considering applying. “I still think Johns Hopkins is my favorite. Pitt was good too.”

“You can go wherever you want, you’re going to succeed either way.” His mom sounded proud, and Dustin smiled at her confidence. He knew how upset she was at the idea of him going far away, but she supported him regardless, encouraging him to apply anywhere and everywhere he wanted. “Have you decided if you’re going to apply to Ann Arbor or not?”

University of Michigan had been where his own father had gone to school. For years, Dustin had declared that he’d wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps, study there just like he had. He’d only been nine when his dad had died, and there weren’t very many ways that Dustin still felt close to him.

Patrick Henderson was a large figure in Dustin’s early memories - he could recall riding on his dad’s shoulders to watch fireworks on the Fourth of July, being held down and tickled until he was gasping for air and kicking frantically to get away, and following him as he cleared a path for Dustin through waist deep snow. 

That last memory was particularly pure - he’d been so little, and looking up at his dad’s broad shoulders with the sun’s glare casting a shadow had given Dustin the impression of a giant, gentle and safe and unwavering. There’d been a blizzard, and they were crossing the yards to his grandmother’s house, and Dustin had never forgotten the way that the snow had glittered in the blazing sun.

When they were safe and bundled up with hot chocolate again, his father had told him about snow, and how water froze in the clouds, how every snowflake was unique, and about the lake effect, or the reason they got so much more snow than other people.

Dustin had loved listening to his dad explain the world to him. His dad was a chemist, and saw everything at its smallest, most base molecules, and figuring out how to shrink the world for Dustin had been a challenge he relished. He’d always help Dustin with his homework, pushing the boundaries of whatever subject he was learning about, and as a result Dustin had pulled ahead in his classes, especially in science.

He’d thought he’d wanted to be a chemist like his dad until last year when he’d taken Mr. Duncan’s sophomore chemistry class, and realized that while he picked it up easily, he didn’t quite enjoy it - be he absolutely loved the AP biology class he’d been placed in this year, and as a result, Dustin had decided to major in biology instead.

In the end, he didn’t think his dad would have minded. He thought his dad would have been excited.

“Yeah, Michigan is on my list,” he said, but he wasn’t sure he was entirely convincing, as it wasn’t one of his top choices, and he honestly wasn’t sure he wanted to return to Michigan. 

Their life in Michigan seemed like a Christmas card now - warm and safe and loving. They’d only moved for his dad’s job, and then his dad had died, and he and his mother had been stuck in Hawkins - but at least he’d gotten the Party out of that even if he’d lost so much more. He didn’t know how he’d feel to go to Michigan and find it different, or ugly, or mean, when he cherished those memories with his father and had so little left of him. 

His mother saw right through him. “I know it’s not the most glamorous,” she said, eyes straight ahead on the road. “But it can still open the right doors. Your dad went there, and he still got that government job, and that’s the only reason we got a pension.”

“Government job?” Dustin asked. He knew his dad had been a chemist, and had loved his job, and his mother had always spoken about his work in reverence, so Dustin had always been under the impression that it was really important. For the first time, it occurred to him that he hadn’t actually known where his father worked.

“Yes, he worked for a research hospital in Ann Arbor, and then Hawkins offered him a position, that’s why we moved here, remember?”

 _“Hawkins Lab?_ ” He felt cold all of a sudden. 

“Yes, Hawkins Lab. I know it was shut down because that girl got killed, but they weren’t doing stuff like that back then, your dad would have never allowed it.” Her voice had taken on that proud tone that crept in when she talked about his dad and his very important work, and for the first time, Dustin wasn’t feeling the pride rising up in his heart alongside her.

They _were_ doing stuff like that back then. El would have been nine then, same as him, and firmly entrenched in her role of lab rat. 

Did he know? He was only a chemist. What would a chemist have to do with experiments on a child? Would he have stayed if he’d seen them abusing a small girl in the name of the greater good? Would he have felt the same thrill that Dustin had felt the first time he’d watched her crush a can?

Would he have been hunting El when she escaped, or would he have been eaten by the Demogorgon first? Would he have been one of the men at the middle school that night, holding a gun to El’s head?

He remembered his dad as outgoing, and funny, and kind. The memory of him didn’t match with serious, violent men in white coats that still gave El nightmares.

One of the reasons he’d wanted to major in biology had been their experiences with the Upside-Down. There were entire other dimensions out there! There had to be labs still studying slides and samples and pictures from the Upside-Down, even if the gate was closed. He still had so many questions - what was the atmospheric makeup that made the air toxic? Were the life forms carbon based? Did they breathe? Bleed?

For the first time, it occurred to him that the people who had been trying to find the answers to those questions had also been complicit in the kidnapping and abuse of a small child. He’d always somehow kept the scientists separated from his vision of the Bad Men, but now he couldn’t. 

There had to have been people who didn’t know, who only studied samples and slides and had no idea where they had come from. Workers, who really did believe Barb Holland’s death had been an accident.

But that would also mean ignoring the obvious military presence at the lab, and the destruction that had occurred when the gate had been ripped open and then closed again. Could they have really remained so ignorant?

He knew he could never make that choice in the name of science, not when he saw the pain they’d caused El, and still caused her to this day. 

But what choice had his father made?

***

**September 9th, 1988**

****

****

**Senior Year**

“Dusty, are you listening to me?” Kelly’s pointed question, only vaguely impatient, drew his attention back to the present. Dustin realized what was happening and shook himself, trying to clear his mind.

He had been daydreaming, if that was the right word for it - he’d been remembering standing in the science lab in the middle school, lights flickering, both El and the Demogorgon screaming, trying to remember details that now seemed fuzzy and vague years after the fact.

 _He’d had to carry her,_ he thought, _because she’d squished a dozen men’s brains and been too tired to walk._

It was one of those things that had previously just seemed like a bullet point in the story of Will Byers’ disappearance and the saga of El and Hawkins Lab, but lately it was just one in a number of memories that Dustin had found himself combing through, agonizing over, and dreaming about repeatedly. He’d never thought that deeply about it before now - before, his focus had been on the epilogue of the story: having Will and El back, supporting Will through his anxiety and terrors, and helping El pass as a normal girl.

“Of course.” Dustin gave her his most disarming smile, then looked over his shoulder, worried. “What did we say about calling me that in public?”

It was something Kelly had picked up from his mother immediately after meeting her. At first it had purely been teasing, but now, just over a year later, there was true affection behind it. Dustin didn’t mind nearly as much as he protested. 

All the same, if the guys heard her call him _Dusty_ just once, he would never hear the end of it.

She reached for him, cool fingertips on his cheeks as she pulled him towards her to kiss him softly on the lips. “But it always gets your attention…” she said, a coy smile on her face.

“Yeah, yeah.” He rolled his eyes, and then sheepishly rubbed the back of his head. “Uh… what were you saying?”

Her laugh, clear and sweet, was genuine as she hefted her duffel bag onto her shoulder and turned away towards the girls locker room. “I’ll call you after practice, okay?”

“Okay.” Dustin leaned heavily against the lockers, watching her go.

How he’d landed a girl like Kelly Bratton, he’d never know. She was on the track team, nice enough that everyone generally liked her, and loved their science classes as much as he did. One of the first things they had connected over was their plans for college - they both wanted to major in biology, though her interests skewed towards the medical, while he was more interested in earth sciences. 

She was light years cooler than he would ever be, and yet somehow they’d once spent an entire Saturday afternoon gleefully playing with an old chemistry set he’d unearthed in his attic that was clearly meant for middle schoolers. 

(Later, she had pushed him against his refrigerator when he’d gone to get her a drink and kissed him senseless, protective goggles perched on her head, and the indentations around her eyes had made him laugh, and then she had laughed and opened her mouth. It was one of Dustin’s fondest memories, and easily his favorite kiss of all time.)

The only issue with Kelly was that she wasn’t truly a member of the Party - not in the sense that they didn’t like her, or excluded her when they made plans, but because there were things that they just couldn’t talk about with her, for her safety, for El’s, for the good of the Party. 

It was hard, because there had been no way to explain his distraction to her - the sheer terror of that night, the grief of El’s perceived demise, his worry for Mike, the blood stains on the floor. Kelly would never understand, and it would only hurt her feelings if he tried to tell her that her kiss tasted the same as the ash floating through the air that night.

***

**November 23rd, 1988**

****

****

**Senior Year**

As soon as he opened the door, he knew something was wrong.

It had been just him and his mother alone long enough that he knew she was upset before he'd even seen her face - he could feel it in the air of the house itself. Despite the fact that the lights were on and the television blaring, there was something gloomy in the air. Dustin was on edge before he'd even put his backpack down and shut the door behind him.

The house was warm despite the November chill. Dustin pulled his sweater over his head, muscles freezing as he turned into the dining room and saw his mother sitting at the table, mail scattered in front of her. She looked as though she'd been crying.

"Mom?" His heart stopped. He hadn't seen his mother cry in years - she’d always been a fearless optimist, and through brute force had held Dustin’s life together after his father had died. If she was this upset, something was really wrong.

"Dustin." She looked up at him, eyes bloodshot. "Where are your SAT results?"

His knees went weak, and he dropped into the chair across from her. "What do you mean?" He swallowed hard, heart pounding. He _hated_ lying to his mother. "They're probably still in the mail."

But his mom was shaking her head. "No, Dustin. Karen told me Mike's came in two weeks ago, and she knew Lucas had his too. You all went on the same day to take the test. Where are the results?"

He didn't want to say it. Didn't want to even think about that morning, when he'd told Mike that he wanted to drive himself instead of carpooling with him and Lucas, then took his mother's car and spent hours driving aimlessly around Hawkins. He'd gone to 7-Eleven and gotten a slushy and a pack of powdered donuts and sat in his car staring at the storefront while he'd eaten them, and then he'd driven to the Hawk, chatting with the guys at the concession stand after the matinee movies had started and the lobby was quiet.

(The guys all knew him because they’d been friends with Steve, even though Steve hadn’t worked at the Hawk for several years by then. There was something comforting about having a conversation that was just about movies and not about his future plans, which was all anybody seemed to care about lately.)

He didn't want to say it, because he knew she would ask _why_ , and Dustin couldn't answer why.

"Please,” his mother said, eyes filling with tears. "Dusty, I can see it, I can see the change in you. You've always been so smart and motivated and - and curious and ambitious, and this is when all that work is supposed to pay off! You hid your fall report card from me, you haven't done any of the paperwork for your college applications, and now you're lying about your SATs. Please tell me what's going on, I won't be mad, _I won't_ , I promise."

The problem was that he himself didn't know what was going on. Ever since they had driven home from Rochester, Dustin had picked apart his memories of his father, trying to remember any mention of his work, if he seemed happy or if he’d been holding anything back. They’d been in Hawkins for less than a year when his dad had died, and at the time Dustin had been more worried about school and making friends and adjusting to his new home.

He hated the knowledge that his father had once worked for Hawkins lab. What they had done to El still haunted her - Dustin had seen first hand the nightmares and fear and pain that she still endured, and the fact that the people who had done it had to have been the top minds in the country stood in stark contrast to his own ambitions.

1982 and 1983 lived in his memory like some fantastic adventure he'd read about in a comic book - and as a bonus, he'd gotten a superhero friend who could play Jedi mind tricks on people. Sure, there were consequences - El had to lay low, Will was traumatized, and sometimes Mike's anxiety was impossible to soothe - but for the most part, he felt proud. They'd been picked, like the characters in one of Mike's campaigns, and they had emerged victorious.

Not to mention the scientific potential he’d seen in the Upside-Down. He’d wanted to dissect dead demodogs, and he’d wanted to look at those weird tentacles under a microscope. He’d wanted a white coat, and his name on papers in scientific journals, and he was a little jealous of the scientists who’d gotten a chance to study those things before El had closed the gate.

But he'd never before considered the fact that the scientists who got to study those things were the same people who'd shaved a little girl's head, tattooed her arm, and locked her into a metal box.

And he'd been forced to ask himself the question - would he do the same thing, if asked? If it meant he got to pick apart the most exciting discovery of the 20th century? Did those scientists ask themselves that question, when they saw a scared little girl who repeated a number when asked her name?

He didn't think he could do it. Any of it.

And it seemed like now that he had connected those dots, he couldn't stop thinking about it. He was having more nightmares than he'd ever had in his life leading up to this school year. School felt like a chore and he had no energy for reports or projects. He couldn't stop himself from looking at middle schoolers and thinking how young they looked, even though he remembered feeling so mature himself at that age.

He'd watched a dozen men die at the age of 12, blood leaking from their eyes and ears. At the time he'd only been concerned about protecting El, and hadn’t considered that there were twelve men who had families that had never gotten a good answer as to what had happened to them. 

_That wasn't normal_. There were people his age who had never seen a demodog, let alone fed and housed one. There were people his age who would never consider how to build a sensory deprivation pool, even if they needed one to find a friend. There were people who had never seen the middle school halls slick with fresh blood, shining in flickering lights.

There were people who had never had a real, serious, life or death discussion about how to exorcise an interdimensional being from one of their best friends.

college applications seemed so unimportant when faced with the big picture, especially when he was afraid that all it would do was lead him back to Hawkins Lab.

"It just -" His throat closed up, and he swallowed hard. He didn't want to lie, but there were things he couldn't tell his mother about, and one of them was climbing into hell tunnels filled with writhing tentacles and setting them on fire. "It just - it. It's.... It just got real for me, you know?"

***

**April 8th, 1989**

**Senior Year**

They ran into Mr. Clark outside of Blockbuster on Friday night, nearly missing him because they were still complaining that the store hadn't gotten a copy of _The Time Guardian_ yet. His smile when he finally got the boy’s attention was warm, and as genuinely interested in them as he’d been when they were his students.

"Hey, you boys are all seniors now, aren't you?" he asked, hefting a squirming toddler into a firmer grip. "Have you decided where you're going to school?"

"Indiana State," Mike replied immediately. "My parents wanted me to go to a state school, and their engineering program is decent."

"Just got my acceptance for Loyala,” Lucas said, shrugging. "But I also got into Northwestern and Purdue, so I'm still figuring out where I want to go."

"You only have a couple weeks left to decide, right?" Lucas shrugged. Dustin felt it as Mr. Clark's gaze landed on him. "And what about you Dustin?"

He cleared his throat, cheeks burning. Debating what to say, he finally muttered, "I'm gonna take a year off, see where it takes me."

***

**1992**

**Present Day**

"So your parents liked Alicia?" Dustin asked, twisting his cap against his sweaty forehead. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and the temperature in Hawkins was easily over 90, hot even for late August. “It sucks I couldn’t meet her.”

"Yeah, I really wanted her to spend the night so she could meet you and Will, but she starts clinicals on Monday, so she just stopped by for lunch on her way from Columbus." Lucas shrugged, but Dustin could see the smile playing across his face.

They were sitting in Lucas’s' Cavalier, on their way back to the Sinclair house from Melvald's. Lucas was home for the first time since Christmas, and Dustin had tagged along with him as he ran some errands for his mother, eager to get out of the house and spend time with his friend. They didn’t get to talk much, with long distance phone calls, and Dustin was eager to hear about his girlfriend and his fraternity and life in Chicago.

"She swung by on her way back from Columbus?" Dustin asked, mentally calculating the distance. "That's not exactly on the way."

Lucas smiled fully bloomed as he nodded. "Yeah it added over two hours onto her driving time, but I really wanted her to meet my parents and..."

Dustin whistled. Lucas was downright giddy, and he hadn’t seen him like that since Max in 8th grade. "You got it bad."

Lucas just shrugged, but he still had that silly, dreamy grin on his face. "Yeah? I guess? We've been dating almost a year. It's time for her to meet my parents. Right?" He suddenly looked worried. “Why, do you think it’s too soon?”

"She clearly likes you just as much as you like her, she drove two hours out of her way just to have lunch with your parents and your horrible sister,” Dustin pointed out. Lucas tried to stifle another smile, and Dustin felt some emotion tinge in his chest, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was - jealousy? Nostalgia? Loneliness?

"Erika is horrible," Lucas confirmed. "She told Alicia I was born with a tail."

Dustin barked a laugh before he could stop himself, though when Lucas gave him the stink eye he immediately rearranged his face to look sympathetic. "Sorry. That's not funny. Sorry."

"It's alright, I already warned Alicia about her." He shifted in his seat, fussing with his visor in an attempt to get the sun out of his eyes. "She was expecting her to say something. Mom's face was hilarious though. I thought she was going to kill Erika right there at the table."

They lapsed into silence. Dustin fidgeted in his seat before asking, "So you're heading back to Chicago tomorrow?"

Lucas was about to start his junior year at Loyola. He loved the school and the city so much that he preferred to stay there even over breaks - over Christmas break he’d missed Christmas Eve, and had only been home through New Years despite having three weeks off between semesters. He’d also skipped spring break, choosing instead to go with his fraternity to a lake house that belonged to a friend.

In fact, his summer vacation in Hawkins had only been three days total. Lucas had spent most of the summer networking with his fraternity’s alumni, aggressively applying for internships, running a radio show on the college station, and picking up hours as a lifeguard at the local YMCA. Half of the stuff he talked about sounded exhausting to Dustin, but Lucas always seem energized by how much was on his plate.

"Yeah, I gotta help the freshman get settled before the semester starts,” Lucas said. "I'm going to have breakfast with Will tomorrow before I leave, you want to come?"

"Oh! Yeah. That sounds great, I haven't seen Will in forever," Dustin blurted out his answer without thinking, and Lucas's responding silence was damning.

He wondered if they had talked about him. It wouldn’t surprise him if they had. 

At first it had been a relief to have Will stay in Hawkins with him. El also hadn’t made any plans after graduation, and Max would be just one county over. It was enough to make Dustin feel like he wasn’t losing everything.

But El had married Mike rather than staying in Hawkins, and despite the fact that Max tried her best, she was the new kid being handed the worst shifts - overnights and weekends - and was working hard to keep her head above water. She didn’t have a car either, which meant Dustin or Will had to go out to her when she was free, and without the glue of the Party or high school to hold them together, it was harder to gravitate towards one another.

Will had been the last to drift, and had felt the worst because Dustin had let it happen, or maybe even encouraged it. In the last year he had noticed a shift in Will’s voice when he spoke, and how could he explain to Lucas that it put a pit in his stomach to know how stifled Will felt at home with his mother?

It was one thing when Max started voc-tech their junior year of high school. That had been her way to escape her stepfather. And it was another thing when Mike applied to college across the state, and Lucas out of state, and another when El had packed her bag and gone with Mike without looking back.

But to know that even gentle Will, who had eschewed school in favor of being happy with his art classes and saving money, was starting to outgrow Hawkins - that just put a hole in his chest.

Somehow his friends had gotten too big for Hawkins, but he hadn't. That had never been his plan. He'd had exciting plans once, ones that had involved taking his talents to a school that deserved them but -

But that hadn't happened. Lots of things he'd been planning hadn't happened. 

"Cool," Lucas finally said. "I’ll call you after I talk to him later, but plan on being at the diner early. I have to be back in Chicago by dinnertime."

Mentally, Dustin calculated how many hours of sleep he could possibly get and still get up for breakfast - he usually went to the late showing at the Hawk and hung out with the crew afterwards. Sometimes they’d lock up and sit on the floor of the atrium, smoking weed and eating leftover popcorn. Other times they drove around, sitting on the edge of the old train bridge and passing around a flask. Most nights however, they went to the Alley Tavern, which was owned by Jeff’s dad and generally allowed them to sit in the corner quietly with their beer as long as they didn’t make trouble.

He’d met them through Steve during his short round of employment at the Hawk, and while they weren’t the Party - could never be the Party - they were fun and easy going and when Dustin hung out with them it was easier to live in the moment. He didn’t feel the same keen sense of falling behind like he did with his peers.

Despite the fact that nights out with the Hawk crew usually meant he didn’t stumble in until the early hours of the morning, Dustin nodded eagerly. “No problem, I’ll be there.”

“Cool. So...” Lucas trailed off. Dustin could tell he was straining to sound cool even though his shoulders had tensed and he was gripping the steering wheel of the car. “What about you? Do you have any plans this fall or…?

“Ooh! Max’s birthday!” Dustin exclaimed, steamrolling right past Lucas’ question. He hadn’t planned on bringing up his idea like this - the full vision was still coming together in his mind, and he knew he needed a complete plan to sway Lucas, but he didn’t want to ruin his good mood by explaining that he had no upcoming plans beyond visiting Steve in Indianapolis. “You know Max’s birthday is next month right?”

"Yeah?" Lucas asked in a challenging tone, the same way he'd say _"So?"_ The Party typically didn't make a huge deal over birthdays - at some point they'd collectively realized that there were six of them, and limited funds between them that they'd rather spend on other fun. Usually it meant baked goods from Mrs. Wheeler, picking the first game at the arcade, or getting dibs on the couch for the sleepover that weekend.

That was something that Dustin was hoping to change this year. "Yeah, well, she's turning 21."

"I know Max's birthday," Lucas said flatly, waiting for the point.

"Well she's living in that house now and we want to throw her a big party," Dustin explained. He had already talked to Max's roommates - two other electrical apprentices who had both seemed excited at the prospect. The idea was that it could double as a housewarming - the three of them had only been there for about a month, pooling their limited resources and getting Max out of her efficiency - and once they had been on board it had been easy to pitch the idea to Max too.

"Max wants to throw a party for her birthday?" Lucas asked, disbelief in his tone. Dustin couldn't blame him - it wasn't really her style. 

Really, Dustin wanted to throw Max a party for her birthday - and also El, and Will, and Mike and Lucas, despite the distance between them. The idea had been brewing in his head for several months - since New Years Eve, when he had looked at the calendar and realized that this was the fated school year that they were all going to turn 21.

Sometimes he thought he was the only one who remembered the Bloodstone Path. That quest had taken place years ago, well before Will and the Upside Down and El and demodogs, but the lesson had been cemented in Dustin’s mind. The Party had to stick together.

Hard to do, with Mike and El in Terre Haute, Lucas in Chicago, Max over an hour away - 

And that was just the physical distance.

The feeling of being left behind was worse with every holiday break, every passing summer.

“Yeah, Max is on board.” And if he could convince them to do this in September for Max, they could do it again in November for El. Dustin had thought that taking this year and celebrating this milestone together would be a way to bring them together properly again.

There was also the nagging knowledge that he understood that he couldn’t keep up with making the Dean’s List and internships, but he would be able to legally drink just like the rest of them, and he desperately wanted something to make him feel equal to his peers once again.

But the only way he could feel important again was if all of them agreed that sticking together was most important too.

Lucas hemmed and hawed. “It’ll be hard to get back for Max’s birthday, it’s still the beginning of the semester, and I’ll have to find someone to cover the radio show -”

“You could do it though,” Dustin encouraged. “And it would mean a lot to Max. None of us have seen her house yet.”

“I don’t know if Alicia would like it,” Lucas pointed out. “Max is my ex. And Alicia knows that.”

“Max is a member of the party,” Dustin said firmly. “And if you’ve told Alicia about the party she should understand.”

Lucas was silent at that. Finally, Dustin pulled his ace: “Mike and El are coming.”

“ _Seriously_?” Lucas raised his eyebrows and actually took his eyes off the road to glance at Dustin. As he suspected, that did hold some sway with Lucas. For Mike and El to agree to spend the money on a bus ticket and make the trip from Terre Haute - also at the beginning of the semester, as Lucas had already pointed out - was a big deal. 

Mike was single-minded when it came to the pursuit of his degree, and despite the fact that they saved and budgeted aggressively, money was always tight with them. When they came back to Hawkins they never went out with him, and even though Dustin always offered Mike wouldn’t let him pay. 

“Okay,” Lucas finally said after another minute of consideration. “Okay, I’ll talk to Alicia and see what she thinks, but I’ll try. I’m not promising anything, but I’ll really try.”

Dustin did his best to shove down the vague feeling of rejection. The fact that he had asked wasn’t enough, it took the promise of Mike and El and the rest of the party to convince Lucas. _Why wasn’t he enough?_

Instead, he tried to celebrate the fact that his vision might actually come to fruition - a year to celebrate with his friends. They had to stick together.

***

Max’s actual birthday fell on a Wednesday. Dustin had offered to drive out and treat her to a drink in honor of being legally 21, but she had pulled a night shift, and thus been unable to celebrate until the weekend. 

As promised, Lucas came home. He was the last to arrive on Friday - late enough that he’d crashed with Dustin, not wanting to wake up his parents - and the next morning they picked up Will and drove out to the house Max was sharing with her friends. 

From the front the house wasn’t too impressive - a small two bedroom lot in a middle class neighborhood where the houses were packed close together. The front yard was sloped, and Dustin was glad he had Lucas and Will to help him lug the boxes with their stereo equipment and clinking bottles up through the slippery grass. The plan was to hook up the stereo so that the music played in all the rooms so they wouldn’t have to blast it - and hopefully prevent the neighbors from complaining. 

They started the afternoon with a beer while they worked, and Max told them about her recent difficulties with her parents before all the other guests started to show. Things had been stable at Christmas, with Max able to visit for dinner, but had deteriorated when Max had moved in with her roommates - both men, fellow apprentices. Her parents - particularly Neil - had protested, and that protest had taken the form of a spectacular argument that had involved calling Max every disgusting name in the book. Some of them she wouldn’t even repeat to Dustin.

She hadn’t spoken to them since - until -

“Can you believe that asshole showed up here last night?” Max asked while Lucas was running wires and Will was setting up speakers. “I don’t even know how he found the address. He tried to force his way in the door, and then he saw all the stuff for the party and really went nuts.”

“Did you call the cops?” Lucas asked immediately from his position on the floor, where he’d been taping wires into place so they couldn’t be tripped over.

“No,” Max admitted after a long minute. They both frowned at her. “I think he wants that. If I’m causing trouble the landlord will throw me out.”

“Jesus, Max.” Lucas stood up and hooked his thumbs into his pockets, as if to prevent himself from reaching for her.

Dustin bit his lip, feeling awkward in a way he hadn’t felt since sophomore year. “Here,” he said, taking the beer can from her hand. There was less than half left, and he drained it in one gulp. “I’ll refresh us.”

He took his time, arranging the bottles on the counter and the coolers in the kitchen, pouring fresh ice and leisurely arranging the cans. That task accomplished, he dug out two cans and checked his watch, deciding that he had waited long enough for any awkwardness between Max and Lucas to pass. By the time he returned to the living room, more people had arrived, and now Max was talking to some people that she’d gone to school with. 

Dustin handed her the new drink, stopped to introduce himself, and then moved along when he realized that they were entirely caught up in talking about electrical work. Looking for Will or Lucas, his heart leaped when he realized Mike and El had arrived. El spotted him first, her eyes lighting up.

He handed Mike his beer and wrapped El up in a hug. She returned it enthusiastically, fingers catching in the curls at the base of his neck. “Miss you,” she murmured into his shoulder, hanging onto him a moment longer than necessary. “Too long.”

“Way too long,” he agreed. It was the first time the entire party had been together in over a year - since the previous summer, before Mike and Lucas had started their sophomore year in college. They’d had a quiet lunch at the Wheeler’s, sitting outside in the fresh sunshine and drinking lemonade while Mike had detailed plans to graduate as quickly as possible. It was one of the first times Dustin had ever endured a real hangover, and the sunlight had done terrible things for his headache.

“Keep that, it’s fresh,” he told Mike, and then took El by the hand and pulled her towards the kitchen. “Come on El, we’ll get something for you too.”

More people were showing up now - Dustin saw one of Max’s roommates talking to his friends, and was pleased to see that a decent house party seemed to be forming. El didn’t let go of his hand even when they were in the kitchen, and he was explaining the options they had - which was best summed up as, lots of different alcohol. 

He tried to remember the last time he’d hung out or even had a conversation with El without Mike hovering - and the thought hurt his heart, because they’d hung out in high school all the time, in study hall, in the library, after track meets and at football games. She’d been his favorite to help him run lines for school plays. It was dismaying to realize that this might have been the first time he was alone in a room with El since they’d graduated high school. 

He made himself a Jack and Coke while El finally selected Schlitz beer - the same kind Hopper always kept in the fridge, he remembered - and when they turned back towards the living room they were intercepted by Max, grinning ear to ear.

“El! You’re here!” El let go of his hand so she could throw her arms around Max’s neck. They rocked from side to side. Max was muttering something in her ear, and Dustin was suddenly struck by the knowledge that El and Max had certainly spent time together just the two of them since they’d graduated. The thought made him feel incredibly lonely, and he left them behind, going back into the living room where he’d last seen the rest of the party.

Lucas noticed him first, breaking into a grin when he saw him, and it was enough to take the edge off of the sharp pain in his chest. As soon as he saw that El was no longer with him, Mike’s eyebrows pulled together, and he craned his head to look past Dustin back into the kitchen. “Where’s El?”

“With Max,” Dustin answered easily. “She has a beer.”

Mike’s shoulder relaxed incrementally, and Lucas slung an arm around his shoulders. “She’s _fine_. Let them do their girl talk, she still tells Max everything.”

Mike cringed. “You know I try really hard not to think about that.”

“Come on.” Lucas guided Mike towards the coffee table, other hand beckoning for Will and Dustin to follow. “Let’s play quarters.”

That was the right thing to suggest - a drinking game that even Will enjoyed, a game that Lucas was preternaturally good at, a game that just made Dustin feel included. A combination of an easy buzz from the beer and Mike’s usual competitive spirit helped loosen him up. It wasn’t long before Dustin noticed that he seemed much more engaged than he had been when they’d first arrived.

Mike told them about his semester and the internship he’d applied for - it was competitive, and he was nervous - while he and Lucas compared notes on their course loads. When Lucas started talking about the charity events he was helping to plan with his fraternity, a niggling concern in the back of Dustin’s mind suddenly blossomed into words:

“Hey,” he said to Mike. “Plan any good campaigns with Maurice lately?”

Maurice and Roy had teamed up with Mike to start a small DnD group at school. Dustin had liked them when they’d visited freshman year - Maurice favored bards too, preferred DMing like Mike, and had come up with some fantastic storylines that Dustin still thought about playing. Dustin thought it was weird that Mike hadn’t mentioned them.

To Dustin’s surprise, Mike shrugged. “We were playing regularly this summer but now that school started our schedules are all nuts. They have coding classes this semester, they’re basically sleeping in the computer lab.”

Dustin frowned. Mike was the type to let stress build up until he exploded, and he rarely told someone while it was happening - he often thought of catching thirteen year old Mike on the Supercomm on that dead channel, and how very stupid he’d felt when he’d realized Mike had been trying to contact El. So obvious in hindsight. Pretty much the only flashes of Pre-Upside Down Mike that they’d seen that year had been when they’d played Dungeons and Dragons. What sort of outlet did Mike have if he wasn’t roleplaying with his friends anymore?

Before he could figure out how to bring it up, Mike turned to Will and said, “Hey, I brought back the jacket you left at my place.”

“Thank you,” Will said, one eye squinted shut as he lined up his shot. “I washed your t-shirt.”

“Good, El was looking for that one,” Mike responded, and it hit Dustin like a suckerpunch.

Will had been out to visit Mike and El without him. 

The shock itself was almost as painful as the realization. Effortlessly, his mind completed the picture - whether Will had asked to visit or Mike had invited him, neither one had asked him to come along. He had no idea whether or not it was deliberate, but he knew which he suspected.

His mind tried to protest that he knew his friends better than that, that they’d never so purposefully ditched him before, but it was hard to hear over how loudly his heart was pounding.

Dustin stood, shooting up so suddenly he ruined Lucas’ shot. The person nearest to them was one of Max’s work friends, and Dustin grabbed him by the elbow and gestured for him to sit. "You play, I need another drink."

If any of them tried to call him back he didn’t hear. He slid through the crowd, on a mission to get into the kitchen, where the counter was lined with bottles. The majority of guests were drinking beer, but Dustin and some other more adventurous drinkers were mixing.

Looking out the window, he could see that it was starting to get dark. There were pizza boxes on the counter - he hadn’t even seen them delivered - and he snagged a piece with pepperoni and proceeded to mix up a fresh drink. He was just arriving at good drunk - where everything felt good and loose, but he could still dial back and avoid the hangover if he wanted - and as he poured Jack into his cup he decided it was time to take the wheels off. It _was_ a party, after all.

There was a crowd around the little kitchen island. El was sitting on the counter, still holding her can of Schlitz. He wasn’t surprised. When the party drank together in high school she'd take polite sips if passed the bottle, usually handing her drink off to Mike, but Dustin didn't think he'd ever seen her properly drunk.

Max was holding a large bottle up to El’s face, amber colored with a big red ribbon on it. When Max saw Dustin, now holding a refreshed Jack and Coke, she waved him over. "Bobby brought tequila!"

Bobby was the roommate currently cutting lemon wedges, while Max started lining up the shot glasses. There weren’t many takers, most people making faces or gesturing to their beer. El reached for Dustin’s hand. "You’re going to join us?" he asked, noticing Max had started pouring into four glasses.

El's eyes darted to Max, who answered for her with half-drunk assertiveness. "Yes she is. We talked about this. It's my birthday and I want to do shots with my friends and El wants to try tequila and I _want_ her to try."

A grin crawled across Dustin's face. _This_ was what he had hoped for when he’d had this idea, _this_ had been his vision for the party. He squeezed El’s hand. "This is going to be fun."

She stared at him when he licked his hand (he involuntarily flashed back to twelve year old El, hair buzzed and wide eyed as he dropped the Millenium Falcon on her toes) and gestured for her to do the same, making her laugh when she hesitated and he tugged her hand to his mouth like he was going to do it for her. 

Cautiously she obeyed, made a face when he sprinkled salt on her skin, and when he mimed how to do the shot - lick your hand, throw it back, bite the lemon - she watched him so intently he might as well have been teaching her nuclear physics. He was relieved that she didn't appear to be remembering the time that he and Will had let her bite into a lemon slice without warning her (which had been hilarious, but maybe a little mean, as Max had pointed out later).

The first one went down like fire - and as the shiver raced down his spine he couldn’t help laughing at the way he, El, Max and Bobby shuddered in unison. He had to coach El to bite the lemon, but her face wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as he was expecting. In fact, she laughed as she spit the lemon out.

“Did you like that?” Dustin asked, watching as she wiped the back of her hand on her jeans.

She stuck her tongue out, rubbed her chest. “Hot.”

“Fun!” Dustin insisted. He reached and started lining the shot glasses up a second time. “Wait ‘til that hits you, it’s like taking a shortcut.”

Max slung an arm around his shoulders. “What are you drinking?”

“Jack and Coke.” He offered Max the cup. She took a generous drink before offering the cup to El.

El took the cup, face curious as she sniffed it, and then took a small sip. She gave Dustin a sharp look. “This Coke tastes funny.”

“That’s Jack.” Dustin took the cup back. “You like it?”

“Who’s Jack?” she asked suspiciously, reaching for the cup again, and next to him Max fell over onto the countertop laughing. The heat was spreading from his stomach out through his limbs, and much like every other time he had a drink, Dustin couldn’t feel the vague gnawing sensation in his stomach that had been present since he and his mother had visited Rochester, New York.

The second shot went down smoother than the first, and by the third his tongue was numb. Dustin’s vision was starting to swim, and when he groped for his cup of Jack and Coke he realized that El had taken it before the third shot and hadn’t given it back. That was fine, he didn’t mind sharing. The cup had been full when he’d come over, and was still almost halfway full. 

Max had sweat beading at her hairline, the color high in her cheeks, and had pulled her mass of hair up into a messy ponytail with the ribbon that had been tied around the bottle of tequila. El’s face was flushed, and she grinned at Dustin with the lemon from the third shot still wedged in her mouth. He’d lost track of time - his hurt feelings and the game of quarters was long forgotten - and Dustin had half a mind to go find Will and Lucas and Mike, fold them into this tequila party, wanting them to have as much fun as they were having.

He was so, so grateful to have all of his friends together in the same place again. 

And then El fell off the counter. 

Dustin was pretty sure she’d been trying to slide onto her feet like a normal person, but her ankle had rolled and she’d stumbled into the refrigerator instead. He rushed to steady her - and found himself sobering quickly as he took in the blank, frantic look on her face.

It was awful that he recognized this, knew what was happening in her brain. She was far away, back at Hawkins Lab. He’d seen El disappear this way before, and he knew that whatever was happening for her right now was terrifying.

“El, El! Max - damnit, get - El!” Her head turned towards him, but her eyes were wide and blank, and he wasn’t sure she saw him. 

“It’s too -” she waved an arm, explaining nothing. Her eyes fluttered, pupils dilated. “It’s like -”

Max was at his elbow, hands hovering but scared to reach out and touch her. They couldn’t always be sure how she’d respond to being touched in this state. “What’s going on?”

“Papa -” El’s breath was coming in quick gasps. “It’s like - with Papa -”

“Hey, hey, hey.” Dustin reached out slowly, hands high so she could watch his movement, and cupped her cheeks, trying in vain to ground her. This was not the first time he’d done this. “Hey, you’re not there, you’re with us, you’re -”

Drunk. She was truly drunk, and Dustin wasn’t sure that had ever happened before. He didn’t know what about that had brought back some long ago buried memory of that horrible man in that awful place, but he was positive that surmounting the climb between happily buzzed and properly drunk had triggered it.

“It’s - he’s -”

“He’s not here,” Max said fiercely. She reached for El’s hand. “He’s _gone_. You’re okay El.”

Sometimes she could be talked down from this. Other times she could be distracted. Beyond that… he remembered when they were sixteen and she’d essentially disappeared into herself, lost in some emotional upheaval about which he’d only heard the basics from Will. 

He’d asked Mike about it once. Mike had compared it to rescuing Will from the Upside-Down - explaining that El had been in some cold, scary place that was nearly impossible to reach. The thought had put shivers in his spine.

“It’s too much - I don’t want to -” Dustin looked down. She pulled away from Max and gripped his wrists, squeezing the soft skin on the underside of his arm between her index finger and thumb. “When I was angry - he’d - pinch - he’d _pinch_ -”

“What, no! El, it’s okay!” This wasn’t part of his vision. “You’re going to be okay, you’re with the Party, you’re safe, you’re having fun!” He tried desperately to make eye contact. She could fight through this part, he was positive, and maybe it wouldn't be so scary once the alcohol turned her brain off and she could enjoy being drunk. 

Tears were leaking from the corners of her eyes, and she was still struggling to breathe. “ _I don’t want to sleep._ ”

“I’m going to get Mike,” Max declared, and wheeled away from them.

Dustin swore. The last thing he wanted was Mike coming in and making a huge deal when all El probably needed was a quiet moment away from the crowd to catch her breath and realize she was somewhere safe - not to mention he’d blame them for giving her tequila in the first place even though she was an adult who had made her own choices.

This was supposed to be a fun night for the entire party. 

“El, _El_ , it’s fine, you’re fine,” Dustin soothed. “It’s me, it’s Dustin, you know me, remember?The Bad Men are gone, remember?”

“I don’t want to go to sleep,” she repeated, whimpering, nails digging in his arms.

"El you're not, you're fine-" He didn't get to finish his sentence, because suddenly he was violently shoved to one side. Max had returned with Mike.

"What the fuck!" he shouted, barely catching himself from falling face first against the counter, but Mike didn't spare him a second glance. When Dustin whirled around to look at them, he was bent low, forehead to forehead with El, who was shivering now.

"Hey Mike," Dustin reached for him, but Mike shouldered him away easily. "Hey it's okay-"

"We're leaving," Mike announced, wrapping an arm around El. "Sorry Max."

El echoed a soft _sorry Max_ as Mike guided her away, and Dustin scrambled to catch up. "Wait, _wait_ guys!"

He trailed after them, trying fruitlessly to get Mike to slow down. If they would just stop for a couple minutes, El could calm down and they could rejoin the party. Lucas used to complain that Mike sometimes coddled El, and it wasn't often that Dustin agreed, but right now he was spoiling the vision Dustin had for this party, and he didn't think that was necessary if only they'd just _stop_ for a few minutes.

The night air was a sobering blast to the face. He was still trying to call Mike and El as they made their way down the steps. Hopper's Blazer was parked halfway down the block under a streetlamp. As they passed under the light, El tripped - Dustin lunged, but Mike had a firm grip and she barely stumbled - and the light above them exploded.

Dustin looked up in awe. It had been a long time since he'd seen El break something. By the time he looked back, Mike had wrenched open the door to the Blazer and had helped El climb inside.

He made one last effort, snagging Mike by the elbow as he leaned across El to make sure her seatbelt was buckled. Dustin didn't think he'd soon forget the sight of El, face red and curls frizzy, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes.

"Mike, seriously, wait, you don't have to leave, she didn't even get sick!" He truly thought the evening would be ruined if they left - and not just Max's party, he thought El would regret it later, and Mike might too if he could recognize that he was overreacting.

Mike whirled around. For a minute, the look on his face was so furious that Dustin seriously thought he might throw a punch.

"Dustin," Mike's hands clenched and unclenched at his sides as he took an audible breath and forced his shoulders to relax. "I will call you tomorrow."

And then he left Dustin on the sidewalk, climbed into the Blazer, and left the party.


	2. But Still the Days Seem the Same

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike finally asks for help in the form of an offer Will can't refuse - and ends up receiving much more than he expected in return.

**Chapter 2: But Still the Days Seem the Same**

**El - November 7th**

***

**January 29th, 1988**

****

****

**Junior Year**

Despite the dull roar of students talking and the usual banging and crashing that was typical for rehearsal, Will was nearly asleep in the back corner of the auditorium, where it was cool and dark.

He'd been sent to the back to work with the light board, but before they'd even been able to launch into setting the stage their director - the notoriously picky Mr. Patton, who was still laboring under the delusion that he’d nurture a talent to Broadway _someday_ \- descended into one of his fits. He'd spent the last half hour of their two hour rehearsal lecturing Jen Carney on the correct form during a tango - and using a mortified Dustin as his partner.

Will had settled in to watch the show, and then slumped lower and lower into the seat to avoid being seen. If he played his cards right, Mr. Patton would forget he'd ever sent Will to the back, and he could sneak in a quick nap.

“Hey.” Julie dropped into the seat next to him, startling him out of his doze. Will rolled his neck to look at her and put one finger up to his lips. 

“Shh,” he whispered. “If he doesn’t run out of steam in the next ten minutes we can escape and go to McDonald’s.”

Julie looked impressed. “You have McDonald’s money?”

“Lucas lost a bet.” He rarely had cash in hand and usually tried to save it, but Lucas had been a sulking, pouty baby when he’d had to hand over the five dollars. Will was in a good mood. “It’s enough to split fries and a milkshake.”

Julie sagged into her seat, out of sight of Mr. Patton. “Perfect. Are we driving or doubling up on your bike?"

Will knew she meant it as a joke, but he couldn't help the face he pulled. She'd unknowingly stuck a hot poker right into a very sore subject. His good mood instantly soured as he remembered the conversation this morning - his voice, pleading and defensive, his mother, infuriatingly calm - and then the awkward, awful car ride where she’d fumbled with the radio dial when he’d refused to talk to her as she navigated the slushy streets of Hawkins.

"What?" Julie prompted, nudging him with her shoulder. "Did you fight again?"

"No." That was the entire problem. If they could argue about it, he might stand a chance of getting what he wanted. Instead, Joyce just steamrolled over him - as always. "We don't even get to the point of a fight. I ask to use the car and she just like, blows me off. _Sorry Will, the car needs gas_. Or, _that's not a good idea, the weather is supposed to be bad_. Or, _that’s okay, it’s on my way._ Why did she even let me get my license if I'm not allowed to drive anywhere?"

He had been surprised that his mother had agreed readily when the subject of his drivers license had come up. Will had expected to spend months wheedling and convincing her that it was a good idea - and instead had been left speechless when she had agreed immediately. He'd gotten his learner's permit and then his license right on schedule, the month before Mike - actually the first of the Party to do so, as Max wasn’t allowed and El was still learning.

He should not have been surprised by what came after, and yet, he had still been blindsided: once he had his license, Joyce simply refused to let him take the car anywhere. At first he'd tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, but as the year progressed and each of his friends had collected their license in turn, he’d had to face it.

Joyce wasn’t going to allow him that much freedom, not without a fight - but she wasn’t going to allow him a fight either.

Julie was sympathetic. "We can walk. It's cold but it’s not far."

"I guess." That didn't make Will feel better. He'd been in a foul mood all day, to the point where even Mike and Dustin - who _always_ pestered him if they perceived anything wrong - were avoiding him. The only one whose presence he'd been able to tolerate had been El's, but he'd skipped all of his classes after lunch in favor of the auditorium and thus hadn't seen her.

Julie was a welcome sight. She was probably the only one outside of the party who knew about his mother and how difficult it could be to live with Joyce Byers. Sometimes, he even preferred Julie to the Party - Julie had no idea about the Upside-Down, or the Mind Flayer, or any other in the conga line of traumas that had made up his pre-pubescent years.

But she did have an idea of what it was like to make herself small, live with a set of overprotective parents - Julie didn’t even have her learner’s permit, although she also conceded that even if she did have her license, her family only had one car, that her father needed for his construction job. They were more comfortable than the Byers, but only because they afforded Julie or her sisters none of the luxuries that would ingratiate them with the more popular rich kids. It was part of the reason Julie had fallen in with the stage crew alongside Will when they’d joined the theater - she loved the shows, but was too used to folding in on herself, trying to avoid the spotlight to do anything more than occasionally help run lines with the actors backstage. 

She made it easy to pretend that he was just a regular sixteen year old with an overbearing mother. It was harder to do that with the Party - their concern for Will sometimes outmatched Joyce's. At least with Julie he felt like he was mostly normal.

"What's Patton doing?" Julie's voice dropped to a whisper.

Will lifted his head, barely peeking over the row of seats in front of them. "His back is turned. Make a run for it?"

"On three." Will nodded his agreement, bracing himself against the seatback.

"One."

"Two."

"Go!"

They both shot up from their seats and dashed through the row while Mr. Patton's back was still turned. Julie easily outstripped Will despite his longer legs - mostly because he never broke into anything harder than a light jog unless someone's life was threatened. The auditorium door banged loudly as it slammed behind them.

Normally he wouldn't be so eager to run away from the auditorium. It had become his safe space in school, especially when everything felt suffocating: his mom, the Party, his teachers, the insomnia, his undone homework, the whispers that still followed him, even Hawkins itself. The theater kids didn't care that Will had once literally died and been brought back to life by the Hawkins Chief of Police - in another dimension. They didn't care if Will sometimes got tired, or that he never did his homework or helped them cram for tests between script readings. They didn't care that he didn't date, dreaded school dances, and that he never had any money.

They cared if Will got the backgrounds painted for _Bye Bye Birdie_ before the dress rehearsal. They cared that Will's artistic flourishes didn't mess up their blocking and staging. They cared about the colors he picked and if it clashed with the costumes, and they cared to help Mr. Patton fundraise to get him fresh art supplies. They cared to make sure Will was included in the cast after parties, and other social events.

Sometimes, when compared to Mike's anxious questions, Dustin pestering him for any reaction, and Lucas watching him out of the corner of his eye, it was exactly how Will wanted to be treated. Like a peer, and nothing more.

He followed Julie to her locker, where she picked up her backpack. Will thought of his, still packed into his own locker. There was no reason to retrieve it. There wasn’t any homework he felt like doing, and the five dollar bill was in his pocket, along with his (useless) driver’s license. 

Julie pulled her long hair over one shoulder so she could pull her backpack straps on, and then gave him a shy smile.

“Ready?” he asked. She reached out and hooked her hand around his elbow

He resisted the urge to shake off her touch. “Let’s go.”

***

**August 5th, 1988**

**Summer Before Senior Year**

"Cold... Cold... Colder..." El's voice, patient and kind, droned eerily through the strangely empty air.

Will stopped, turning and fixing her with A Look. "That's not helping as much as you think it is."

El shrugged, unoffended. It was rare Will offended her. "You're not close."

"But..." Will closed his eyes, took in a deep breath, tried to center himself. "I'm in my bedroom. Mom was out on the porch, so she should be over here..."

"The Void doesn't work that way," El said. 

Will huffed and turned towards her, putting his hands on his hips. "Then how does it work?"

El shrugged. "I don't know."

"That's not helpful," Will repeated. El shrugged.

"I can see her,” she said, tilting her head to Will's right. "Focus."

"She was sitting outside smoking a cigarette." Will stared hard, eyes straining.

He couldn't even say why he cared - by all rights, he should be doing everything in his power to avoid this strange, sterile environment, but the Void was not the Upside-Down, and though it was by no means homey, it wasn't threatening, or scary, and there was something comforting in knowing that there was always a way for El to find him. 

He hadn't even realized it was a fear he lived with, and yet it made sense after a week spent hiding from the Demogorgon - to know that if he was lost he could be found, and could find anyone else in turn.

His mother didn't appear, but he did suddenly get a whiff of her camel cigarettes. He froze.

"Do you see?" El asked quietly. Will shook his head, but closed his eyes, sniffing at the air. 

"I can't see her, but she has to be right here. I can smell..." a step to the left and it was gone. Back to the right and there it was again. "Her cigarettes... and... soap. She was doing laundry after dinner."

"She has a basket with her," El said. "Folding clothes."

Will sat down. "Why can't I see her?"

"I don't know." El came to stand beside him. 

There were always questions like this when they were in the Void together. Will was ever curious, unsure why this was his lot in life. How had he become so inextricably intertwined with the girl standing next to him? What _was_ the Void? Why was he pulled here now that the Gate was closed? He wanted to understand it, and control it - he had control over so little, and El seemed to move with ease in this strange environment.

El had no more answers than he did. They would likely never get the answers they were seeking in their lifetimes, but they had lots of ideas. Will thought that anyone could get to the Void with enough practice, but El didn't think so. El thought that part of his mind was still trying to flash to the Upside Down, but couldn't because she had closed the Gate.

No matter which was true, Will was an expert in trying to make the best of his lot in life, and he wanted to find his friends the same way El did. It wasn’t going as well as he hoped - he couldn’t see them as physical figures, the way El could. Once, during a sleepover at the Wheelers’, he had slipped into the Void, just to see. Despite the physical proximity, he could only hear Lucas and Dustin - a strong, steady heartbeat, and the electric hum the television made when it was turned on or off. 

It made sense. Lucas had become much more quiet and serious than he’d been as a child, with a single minded ambition that had propelled him to the top of the class. Lucas, with an independent streak that made him unafraid to challenge obstacles himself even though he knew the Party stood behind him. Lucas, who wanted to be prepared for anything and would protect his friends with nothing but a rock as long as his heart was beating. 

And Dustin - Dustin was the one who had first suggested the Supercomms, figuring out how they could stay in contact even when school nights and parents prevented them from talking. Dustin, with his infectious enthusiasm for science, had been the one to sway them when Mr. Clark had asked the four of them about the AV Club, had insisted they see Star Wars, had been the one to bring the first Monster Manual to school, thus sealing their fate as The Party. He was always broadcasting, putting himself out there, pulling people in and holding them together as effortlessly as he had learned Morse Code.

The others he could catch a glimpse of - Max was a pulsing red light, formless but bright enough to cast a glow across the soft ripples of the Void. And Mike - Mike was soft blue smoke, an ever smouldering fire, rising and curling like fog on an early autumn morning.

Remembering this, Will turned suddenly and studied El. Her hair was pulled up high in a topknot, biting her thumbnail as she watched him search for his mother. She was wearing a simple denim skirt and tank top, but her feet were bare - he hadn’t noticed, at first, because -

“You’re with Mike, aren’t you?” he blurted out, eyebrows pulling together. It was definitely there, the soft blue smoke, washing over El’s feet and legs like waves.

“Sleeping,” she confirmed. “Parked over by the cabin trail.”

The implications were clear, and since El didn’t seem to be embarrassed, Will tried not to be either. “Is… is now a bad time?”

“He’s sleeping,” El repeated, stretching her arms over her head. Her back cracked, a soft pop in the still air. “I’ll know if he wakes up. You should look for him.”

“I’m not sure I want to,” Will retorted, eyes narrowing and focusing on El nonetheless. “Is he wearing pants?”

“I’m not.”

“That’s not helpful.” Will felt like a broken record, but still a smile tugged at his face. Dustin took great pleasure in interrupting Mike and El when they were caught up in each other, but Will had never felt the same even though they had never made him feel like an intruder, even in accidentally intimate moments like this.

“Will!” His mother called for him suddenly. He still couldn’t see her, but her voice echoed through the Void.

“Gotta go,” Will braced himself to wake up. “Tell Mike I said hi.”

***

**February 16th, 1989**

****

****

**Senior year**

When the phone rang after 9, Will knew who it was before he even picked up - the rate for long distance calling dropped into something affordable after 8:30, and it was the only time Jonathan ever called home. Will dropped the textbook he hadn’t been reading and muted the television (Roseanne had just cut to commercial), reaching the receiver before the third ring.

“Hey Jonathan,” Will greeted, pulling the arm chair closer to the wall so he could sit comfortably. It was a welcome distraction on this late winter night - his mother was closing at Melvald’s and then staying late to do inventory. Will wasn’t expecting her home until closer to midnight, and he also knew that he was unlikely to fall asleep before she got home.

(They both knew the routine at this point. She’d fret over the fact that he was up so late on a school night, then ask why he hadn’t gone to the Hopper’s if he didn’t want to sleep alone in the house - as if she didn’t know full well that he liked to see her home on late nights, had the same fear of waking up alone that she did.)

“Hey Will.” His brother’s voice, warm and familiar, crackled across the phone line. Will felt a pang in his chest. There weren’t words for how much he missed Jonathan, and sometimes he was mad at his brother for leaving him behind in Hawkins when he was one of the few people who truly understood Will - but Jonathan also asked if Will was okay with him applying to NYU, and how could Will have ever said no? Jonathan had talked about New York City since he was a little kid, and Will was well aware of how selfless his brother had been growing up.

If anyone deserved their chance at a self-serving adventure, it was Jonathan. He was learning about himself in ways that wouldn’t have been possible here in Hawkins, and Will was deeply envious of how he seemed to be morphing effortlessly into an adult.

“Mom asked me to call you,” Jonathan said upfront. Will groaned. This wasn’t going to be a phone call about any exciting parties, or complaining about roommates, or studying for midterms.

“Why?” he whined, even though he was pretty sure he already knew why.

“Because you’re turning 18 in a month and you're a senior in high school and she’s worried because you haven’t said anything about graduation or this summer or what you’re going to do next year.” Jonathan’s tone was aloof, but Will could hear the worry threading through. 

“I’m going to do whatever I want,” Will said, grumpy and determined. 

“And what do you want to do?” Jonathan challenged.

“I don’t know.” Will rolled his eyes, involuntarily curling up into the chair, pulling his knees against his chest. A defensive posture. “Art.”

“Will…” Jonathan trailed off, and the ensuing silence cost at least a dollar. 

“What?” Will tried hard to marshal his growing ire - he didn’t talk to Jonathan enough to waste time arguing with him.

“Can you at least narrow it down within the field of _art_? Even that might make Mom feel better.”

“Maybe instead of trying to make her feel better, I’ll just tell her exactly what kind of pictures you’re taking to make rent so she’ll be more upset with you than me,” Will muttered traitorously. It was an empty threat - he’d never break Jonathan’s trust that way, but -

“Very funny Will. You know I get to keep the tasteful ones for my portfolio.” Jonathan knew Will too well. Or maybe he was unashamed of his work. The thought of moving so confidently through life made Will feel another pang of jealousy. “And you’ll keep your mouth shut, because you know she’ll try to send me money, and she’s not going to take anything away from you, which leaves -”

“Nothing for herself,” Will sighed. No matter what, Joyce was the one who suffered, whether it was with the knowledge that her children were struggling or physically from lack of money.

“Right, and you’re not a little kid anymore.” So rare for Jonathan to approach that scolding tone. Will felt the rebuke twice as hard, a guilty punch to his heart. “I know she gave you a hard time about finding a job last summer, but -”

"She doesn't want me to make plans," Will blurted out, giving voice to an old complaint that went back years at this point. His voice was high pitched, and foriegn to himself. "She just wants me to stay here with her."

Begging for space at the Snow Ball, for permission to ride his bike with the Party, to stay after school for the AV Club and then theater, to drive their car, or to sleep at his friend’s houses. Only two years earlier she had held him close and asked for more time, and he had long since realized that it was easier to lie than to fight.

"You _know_ it's hard," Jonathan said complacently. "It's hard for you too. It was even hard when I left and I didn’t even -"

"I don't want to leave!" Will burst out. "And she doesn't want me to leave."

How to put into words how he felt pulled in two directions? How to explain the apathy he felt as he watched his friends make plans to move away, decide what to study and what careers to pursue, and how much that apathy scared him? He should want those same things, he knew, but when he thought of the future, he came up blank - almost as if he couldn’t see himself in the future. 

On the other hand, however, there was real resentment bubbling in his heart - he loved his mother, and knew that no one would ever love him as much as she did. She had literally marched into Hell and pulled him back to Earth, and he'd never be able to repay her for her sacrifices. However, that didn't change the fact that he couldn't run to the grocery store without being peppered with questions about what he was doing and when he'd be back. Or the fact that every time he mentioned getting a job she reassured him that he didn’t need to, that she would always take care of him, and all she wanted was for him to be happy. He hadn't even paid for the watercolor class he was taking in the fall - she had insisted, after blanching when he'd mentioned he was saving up.

Sometimes after the worst nightmares - the ones that left him trembling, shaking, calling for El over the Supercomm - he harbored the dark fantasy that he would come upon her one morning, skin shed like a snake, and he'd be expected to step right into it, inheriting her eyes and her house and her status as the Town Basketcase. 

Will Byers: Joyce Byers version 2.0.

He knew the way she treated him wasn't right - but he was too tired to fight the status quo, and why should he? Why hurt his mother's feelings when he didn't even know what doing so would accomplish? Would it make him feel like a normal teenager? He had never been normal, especially not since he was twelve.

"Will," Jonathan said. The sharpness was gone, and returned was his brother’s trademark patience. It hadn't been until high school that Will himself had fully appreciated everything Jonathan had done for their family. He deserved every minute of his freedom in New York. "You know Mom will support you no matter what you want. She would do _anything_ for you. She just wants you to be happy, but she wants you to pick something. Anything."

"Art makes me happy." And just like that, they had looped back to the beginning.

Jonathan sighed, and Will felt guilty about the victorious feeling in his chest. For the time being, the argument was over. Jonathan knew when to push, and when Will could not be budged. "Alright. Tell me about the class you're taking in the fall."

***

**Christmas 1991**

****

****

**Sophomore Year of College**

"You know you can come out, right?"

Mike blurted out the question late on Christmas Day, when it was just the two of them standing on the front porch of the Byers' house. They were waiting for El and Hopper, who were helping Joyce wrap leftovers to take home. The only light was from the luminaries that Joyce had lined the walkway with in a futile attempt to beat back the night. Will would have to remember to walk through and blow out the candles before they went to bed.

The question took him by surprise.

"What?" Will asked.

" _What_ , what? You heard me," Mike grumbled, and when Will squinted at him in the dark, it looked like he was blushing. He was staring down at his shoes.

"I know I can visit," Will told him, not understanding Mike’s point. "I came out with the whole party last year, remember?"

"That's not what I meant." Mike was looking down, talking to the ground. "I meant, like. You. You can come out and hang out with us. Like, not just for a weekend. Come hang out with El. I think she's lonely. School is just going to get busier for me and - you know - with your mom, if you like, need a break or something. Or if you’re just like, sick of Hawkins for a little while.”

“You don’t really want me underfoot, do you?” He was trying to keep his tone light, but there was a definite note of anxiety that Will couldn’t help noting. What had prompted this? Had his mother said something? Had Hopper? Was he that transparent? “Where is this coming from?”

Mike was silent. From inside the house, he could hear El’s bright laughter. Will could remember the previous Christmas, and the fight with Mike’s parents, and his bad temper the next day. It was a relief to hear her laughing.

Finally, Mike said, “Have you seen my dad’s new car yet?”

“Huh?” Will had whiplash from the abrupt change of subject. “Your dad got a new car?”

“Yeah.” Mike scuffed his toe. “I saw it tonight. We had a talk.”

“About what?” Will’s nose wrinkled. He was well acquainted with the strife of the Wheeler household. The Byers home had been Mike’s safe haven the summer after he and El had gotten married.

“Eh.” Mike shrugged and went quiet. “The car, I guess. I dunno, I just want you to know. I just don’t want to leave something until it’s too late.”

Will didn’t know if Mike was talking about himself, his marriage, or his parents, but before he could ask the front door opened and El burst out, bundled into her puffy winter coat and scarf wrapped up around her nose. She took Mike by the elbow, and Will admired the way his body unfolded from his tense posture and leaned towards her. It didn’t even seem to be a conscious choice, the way they gravitated and instinctively made room for one another.

They would do that for him, he suddenly realized. It wouldn’t be like living with Joyce, who didn't give him very much room at all.

When he hugged Mike goodbye, he said, “See you soon.”

***

**1992**

****

****

**Present Day**

Will navigated the Pinto into the reserved parking space behind the building where Mike and El lived. He would have been safe parking on the street, he knew - no one was interested in breaking into his crappy old car. It’s very existence was an advertisement that he had nothing worth taking - but Mike always insisted. Mike and El didn't have a car and the space was included in their lease. Someone should use it, and while that someone was usually Hopper, Will had been taking it more and more often. 

His mother wasn't thrilled with him driving the Pinto across the state - wasn't even happy at the idea of him driving it around Hawkins - but he had refused the offer to borrow her car. The Pinto was old and beat up and didn't look great, but it still ran, and it wasn't half as bad as she seemed to think it was.

The Pinto was her current fixation. Will hated when she did that; picked one thing and obsessed over it, insisting he needed better when he was happy with what he had. It was something that he hadn’t really noticed until Jonathan had moved to New York, though once he had realized it became obvious that she had always been that way. How many times had she offered him fresh crayons when the ones he had were fine but ragged, or made sure he had a new jacket when last year’s still fit, even barely? It had been a trial to convince her that he needed to drive himself around independently in the first place, then a battle to make her believe he was happy with taking her Pinto. He’d overheard her telling Hopper she was debating buying him a car and just keeping the Pinto for herself.

It had always been as endearing as it was annoying - she’d never let the house fall apart to make Will happy, but she’d happily go without basic necessities if it meant he got something that was a luxury, and Will couldn’t seem to make her understand that they didn’t need to live like that.

He hadn't minded not being able to afford college. He hadn't minded staying in Hawkins. He hadn't minded that Mike and Lucas had gone away to school, and he hadn't minded that Mike had taken El with him - and that was a shameful secret that he’d never be able to admit out loud: that he missed El more than Mike. While Mike was maybe his closest friend, who had seen him at his worst but hadn’t flinched, and the first person to ever make his chest ache, El was transcendental; she’d been the first spot of warmth when he’d been the coldest he’d ever been when she’d taken his hand in the Upside-Down, and sometimes he felt like she’d never let go. 

She was his confidant, and the best part about her was that he didn’t always need to talk for her to understand. Mike had said it a long time ago, and he’d been right: El always understood.

He’d been blindsided when they’d decided to get married right out of high school, and then he’d felt stupid: El had been open and honest about how she was dreading Mike moving away, and he shouldn’t have been surprised that they had been determined enough to find a way to be together.

So he’d made sure they had wedding rings - so many times that summer had he been tempted to smack Mike upside the head for downplaying their importance, because technically _yes_ , you could get married without them and El was fine with that but Mike had never explained that people would think they were _weird_ if they got married without rings, and it was already going to be hard enough for anyone to take them seriously - and then he’d done his best to make sure their marriage was celebrated, and the night before they moved to Terre Haute Will had hugged El tightly and promised her that he’d look for her in the Void.

He’d come to terms with only seeing them and Lucas on breaks, and then, as the school years had progressed, whenever they could make it home. At first he’d seen Dustin almost daily, then every weekend, and now whenever Dustin would return his phone calls, and that was another thing that he’d just come to accept. Dustin was spinning his wheels, and every time Will mentioned taking a new class or even wanting to move out of his mother’s house Dustin made a face, as if Will was somehow judging him for not saying the same things back.

Will had never judged Dustin - his life experiences had taught him that the most important thing was to be happy, and that most of the other minutiae that came with life was ultimately inconsequential - but he _was_ convinced that Dustin wasn’t happy with the way he was living his life. There was no way to convince him of that without talking about everything though, all the way back to their senior year of high school, and Dustin very much did not want to talk about it. Even hinting at the subject brought nervous stuttering and an immediate change of subject.

Most of the people he hung out with now were the ones he took art classes with, shared studio time with, and Julie, who was taking transcription classes at the same campus. His class credits weren't counting towards anything - because he refused general education classes, even though it wouldn’t hurt to put an English or algebra credit on his transcript - but it was cheaper than paying for real studio time once he factored in the cost of supplies, and he could see how much his work had improved since high school.

Of course, that didn't pay the electric bill, and if he was ever going to move out of his mother's house, he needed to find something that would. It didn't matter how many times she reassured him that there was no rush, that he could just take art classes if it made him happy.

The problem was that he was still working out what, exactly, made him happy. His art made him happy, but he was reasonably sure slogging through a college degree wouldn’t. He loved his mother, but the house now felt too small, like they couldn’t get out of each other’s space - and more than that, it seemed like she didn’t _want_ to untangle. He wanted his own place, but he didn’t feel like he belonged in Hawkins, and if Hawkins wasn’t home, wasn’t what would make him happy, what would?

While he figured it out, he had Mike and El. When they had been home last Christmas Mike had asked him to come visit more often, keep El company, and not quite a year later Will had been out no less than five times, enjoying the change in scenery, the way El lit up when Mike came home, the sense of camaraderie he’d developed with Maurice and Roy, and home cooking from Anna and Marco. It was easy to see why El was so overwhelmingly happy with their life in Terre Haute - as much as they worried about money, there was a certain simple intimacy that was nourishing in its own way. The fact that they’d made room for him, folded him into their household, spoke volumes about the fact that they wanted Will to be happy too.

(There was also the sneaking suspicion that maybe Mike and El were a little homesick themselves, and maybe a little too proud to admit it, but for as much as they gave Will, he could give them their pride in return. He’d never broached the subject, even when El got teary eyed at casseroles from Joyce and crossword puzzle books from Hopper.)

Shouldering his bag, he walked up the steps, knocked on the door - _3-1-2,_ a habit he hadn't been able to break since high school - and was surprised when it was Mike who answered instead of El turning the locks for him.

“ _Good_ ,” Mike said cryptically, opening the door wider and letting him in. “It’s only you.”

Will dropped his bag in front of the closed door. “You know I don’t expect a parade but _hello_ is nice to hear.”

“Hello,” Mike said automatically, leading Will towards the kitchen. “El thought you’d be here around lunch. You want a sandwich or anything? There’s leftover cake.”

“Nah.” He plopped down on the loveseat, legs curling underneath him. Gesturing back at the door he asked, “What was that about? Were you expecting someone with me?”

Mike’s face darkened. He sat down next to Will and picked up an open textbook from the coffee table. “Dustin called last week. Wanted to come out for El’s birthday, throw a surprise party. I told him no, but I thought maybe he’d try to come with you and surprise us anyway.”

Will kept his face carefully neutral. The fact was, Dustin _had_ called him with the same idea, and it had taken every single interpersonal skill (and the fact that he knew his friends inside and out) to simultaneously talk him out of the idea and not hurt his feelings. 

He knew what Dustin wanted. Dustin loved El, and wanted El to feel loved. He wanted El to have a proper 21st birthday party - not like Max’s, which hadn’t calmed down until almost sunrise - with their friends, safe and intimate while still making her feel like she was a normal girl. Of all their friends Dustin had only been second to Mike when it came to trying to give El the normal experiences she had missed as a child isolated from society, and this was just another of those experiences. Will believed that Dustin’s instincts were pure, but the fact was that at this point in time, El didn’t want a party.

Right now, alarmingly, she mostly wanted to sleep. 

“What did you tell him?” Will finally asked. Mike could be impatient when he thought his opinion was obvious and should be shared by everybody, and Will hoped he hadn’t hurt Dustin’s feelings.

“That it wasn’t a good idea, and even if it was, El’s not up for it and school is too busy.” Mike shrugged and flipped a page in his textbook. “If El wanted I would have had everybody out, but I asked her and all she wanted was to have cake and a night in alone. No homework, no chores. Claire gave El the night off.”

Will eyed the pile of VHS tapes strewn in front of the TV stand. “Looks like you had a marathon.”

Mike rolled his eyes. “Yeah I told her she could pick whatever she wanted.”

“Dirty Dancing?” Will asked.

“Only twice,” Mike reported. “She restrained herself. She did want to watch the Little Mermaid though. I’ve had _Part of Your World_ stuck in my head all day.”

“ _Under the Sea_ is way better,” Will protested jokingly, and the dark look Mike gave him made him laugh. He turned so his back was braced against the arm of the couch, resting his elbows on his knees. “How are you?”

Mike’s eyes darted to the closed bedroom door. “Worried. She’s been… missing stuff lately, like she’s zoned out all the time. Burned some food, losing things. And sleeping a lot. She hasn’t missed work or anything, but I’ve come home from school a couple times and I don’t think she’s left the bed at all. I think Max’s party really triggered something.”

Will sucked in a breath. “Not as bad as -”

“No,” Mike said firmly. They both remembered the spiral that had preceded El’s nervous breakdown in high school. “Not that bad. But…” he chewed on his lip, looked towards the door again. “But almost as bad as before, when she wouldn’t talk to me and got all weird at school. And if it gets that bad again, we’re so far away from help. I think I’d have to send her home, and I don’t think she’ll go willingly. And I don’t know how to bring it up, because what if it makes her worse?”

Will’s heart skipped a beat. “You don’t -” he stumbled over the words. “You don’t really think that could happen do you?”

The last thing he wanted was to see El in that state ever again. When they were sixteen she had disappeared within herself, seemingly overnight, and even with his help (he still had the book that Doc Owens had given him, that they’d worked through together, passing everything he knew about coping to her) it had still felt like a monumental effort for her to wake up again. 

“I don’t think so,” Mike said slowly, then amended, “Most of the time. But she keeps saying stuff like she did last time, like things don’t matter, and having nightmares, and… I don’t know how to help her. I didn’t know then either.”

He lapsed into silence, gazing at the opposite wall with an anguished look on his face. The book in his lap was forgotten as he tapped his pen against the page, agitated. Will frowned, gave him a moment, and then reached out, nudging Mike with one foot.

“What?” Mike asked absently. His eyes moved from the wall back to his lap.

“You told me how El was,” Will pointed out. “I asked how _you_ were.”

This seemed to throw Mike for a loop. He blinked, processing, before finally defending weakly, “She’s my wife.”

“I know that,” Will said gently. “But you’re still two separate people. I know you’re worried about El but… how are you?”

Mike was quiet for so long Will thought he’d somehow insulted him - because if there was someone he knew who could be insulted by a friend expressing concern it was Mike Wheeler - and just as Will was starting to feel awkward Mike blurted out, “I got the internship.”

It was a completely unexpected change of subject. By the time he caught up with what Mike had said he was avoiding eye contact again, a blush on his cheeks. “That’s great though!”

The internship was with a medical supply company, and because it was one of the few paid internships in the area it was insanely competitive. Mike had told Will back in the summer that he’d been planning to apply, but wouldn’t be surprised to be passed over.

“It is great,” Mike agreed, the smallest smile quirking at his lips. “But…”

“But?” Will prompted when Mike went alarmingly silent once again. Finally he sighed, dropped his text book on the table, and turned to fully face Will, cross-legged on the loveseat.

“But I didn’t think I was going to get it,” Mike admitted. “So I didn’t really make plans for it, but now that I know I have it, I have to figure out my classes and schedule next semester.”

“Oh.” Will had never thought of that, having neither an internship nor classes that counted towards anything to worry about. “Is that bad?”

“It’s a lot… _more_ , than I’ve ever done before.” Mike’s jiggling knee was shaking the whole loveseat, but Will didn’t dare distract him to point it out. “I have to be at the hospital on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, so if I still want to graduate on time, which I really _really_ do, I’m going to have to load up my schedule on Tuesdays and Thursdays to compensate.”

“Which is more time -” Will’s eyes shifted to the closed bedroom door.

“Away from El.” Mike was nodding. “She’s never complained about my schedule but it’s been pretty regular until now - I’ve never had to take evening classes or Saturday classes, and I’m probably going to have to do both next semester.”

Will watched as Mike’s face changed while he talked - how his face went from far away worry when he’d been talking about El to an expression that was tense and overwhelmed as the next semester’s worth of work solidified before him. His shoulders slumped as he rubbed his forehead. Will wondered if this was the first time Mike had voiced any of these concerns out loud. He seemed to be too worried about El to add to her burden. 

“Do you know how expensive a bus pass is?” Mike asked Will, who shook his head and shrugged. “Expensive. We’ve managed the last two winters without one but I’m going to have to get one this year so I can get to the hospital.”

“You don’t even take the bus in the winter?” Will asked, face twisting. Indiana winters were brutal.

Mike shrugged as if it wasn’t a big deal. Maybe it wasn’t a big deal to him, compared to El, who had once survived weeks in the woods by herself. “Once in a while. Every cent counts, you know?”

Will bit his lip, and looked back at the front door uneasily. He always looked forward to spending time with Mike and El, but - “Do you, like, still want me here? I can leave if I’m underfoot you know. It won’t hurt my feelings. It’s nice that you guys have me out, but -”

“No.” Mike’s voice was firm, and he lifted one hand as if he was going to rest it on Will’s arm before biting his thumbnail instead. “No, I want you to stay. I was actually trying to figure out how to ask you if you’d spend more time out here next semester. Pretty much the only way I’m going to class tomorrow is because I know you’ll be here with El. She’s - she’s comfortable with you.”

“Oh. Oh okay.” Will bit back a smile, biting his lip as he considered. He wondered if Mike even realized what he’d just admitted. Mike wasn’t good at asking for help, worse still at even conceding that he needed it, but he would do anything for El, and that included asking Will to keep her company while he was in class all day. “I can stay as long as you want.”

His mother might have something to say about that. Then, the thought of his mother gave him an idea and before he could even think through the implications or whether or not it was even a good idea, Will blurted out, “You know, if I’m going to stay out here next semester, you can use the Pinto. It’s not great but it’ll save you money on the bus pass.”

The change that came over Mike’s face was so drastic that Will thought he might get sick. His lips went slack, mouth dropping open, and his eyebrows rose dramatically. The change - _the relief_ \- in his expression only served to highlight how pinched and stressed Mike had looked before. “I - that’s - that would be - Will I can’t -”

“Why not?” Will challenged. “Otherwise it’ll sit in your driveway. Use it.”

He didn’t point out that Mike couldn't afford to say no. They both knew it.

Mike cleared his throat and looked back at the coffee table, where his book lay open. A blush was starting to bleed through his cheeks. “That would be huge Will. Th-thank you.”

He coughed, and cleared his throat again, and Will sensed that Mike might need a moment alone. “I should go say hi to El.”

“Yeah.” Mike pulled his text book back into his lap, still not looking up at Wil. “She’s been waiting for you.”

Will got up and went to the closed door. He pressed an ear to wood, and then, quirking a smile, pushed it open without knocking. 

It might have been rude in other circumstances - El was laying on top of the covers, teddy bear tucked under one elbow. Her eyes were closed, but she didn’t stir when he came in and quietly shut the door behind him.

It was okay because he was expected. He could tell because she’d left the radio on for him.

Will slipped his shoes off and laid down next to her, closing his eyes and focusing on the noise from the radio - 

_Bzz_ \- cold front is pushing in - _Bzz_ \- that was ten songs without interr - _Bzz_ \- now through next Saturday - _Bzz_ \- come on down! - _Bzz - Bzzz - Bzzzzzzzz_

He opened his eyes, and the world was black.

To his eternal consternation, El was still sitting on the bed, while he was now standing. She smiled at him and gave him a little wave.

“It’s not fair,” he complained, sitting down gingerly next to her, “that you’ve figured out how to bring stuff into the Void with you. I still can’t even get my shoes to follow me.”

“It’s okay,” El said quietly, with that crooked, affectionate smile he knew so well. “Not supposed to be here.”

It had been a scary time before he’d learned what the Void was - it was so different from the Upside-Down, and he’d had no idea where his mind was slipping to when he slept. He’d been scared to say anything, knowing that with Hawkin’s lab closed there was nowhere to turn for help. All he’d had was Doc Owens’ books and literature on surviving trauma and processing stress, which talked a lot about how to handle nightmares but had nothing on travelling between dimensions while sleeping.

The relief when El had recognized what he was talking about had been incredible. Since they were sixteen, he’d come to see the Void as, if not a friendly place, not a scary one at least. El would always be much more comfortable there than he ever would.

They still debated why it was happening, how it was even possible. He’d never slipped into the Void before she’d closed the gate, only to the Upside-Down, which had left him as prey to the Mind Flayer. 

If the alternative was the Upside-Down, Will would take the Void every night for the rest of his life.

He pulled his legs up onto the bed. El’s abilities were remarkable. The bed felt solid and warm beneath him. “I think I felt Max last week.”

El’s face lit up. “Really?”

“Yeah, it was-” He lifted his hands, gesturing fruitlessly, trying to find the words to describe the frenetic energy that he’d felt pulsing at the edge of his vision. The light that he had seen before had been just a glimmer, but it was definitely there, and it was the first time he’d been able to sense Max from a county away. He’d been pushing himself more and more since Mike and El had moved - he hadn’t realized how much comfort he’d drawn from feeling them in the Void, from knowing instinctively which way to turn to find his friends. “Red.”

It was the lamest possible way to describe it, but El nodded immediately in understanding. “Like she’s skating around you in circles.”

“Yeah!” Will bobbed his head, pleased. “I couldn’t see her though. I still can’t see Dustin either. I can feel him, and sometimes I even hear him talking.”

“Practice,” El urged, her tone clearly proud. “Keep practicing. I found you while you were driving.”

“Did you hear me swear at that asshole truck driver outside Indianapolis?” Will asked, and El beamed at him without replying. 

“Glad you’re here safe,” was all she said, laying back. Her eyes drifted closed, and Will watched as her breathing started to even out. He could see the changes Mike was talking about in her short sentences, and how far away she seemed to be even though she was sitting right next to him.

“Hey, we were talking about Max.” Will straightened, and put a hand on her leg. “Don’t go to sleep yet. This is important.”

She cracked one eye open, and he was relieved to see a little bit of sharpness in her expression. “What?”

“Did you talk to Max yet?” Will asked. He’d brought this up twice before - a couple of days after Max’s birthday, when he’d called her after Hopper had confirmed she was mostly okay, and then again two weeks later when he’d talked to Max and learned that El had not listened to him.

She avoided eye contact. “El?” Will prompted gently.

When she didn’t respond, Will sighed. “El you really need to call her. Or write her a letter. Something. Anything!”

El’s mouth twisted. Will pressed his point. “She feels really bad about her birthday.”

“Not her fault,” El finally said. Her grip on the teddy bear tightened.

“Then _tell her_ that,” Will insisted. “You tell Max everything, why is this different?”

El sighed. “She’s going to want to know what happened.”

“What happened?” Will shrugged his shoulders, holding up his hands. “You got drunk, had a panic attack, and Mike took you home. It _happens_ and no one in the Party has ever judged you for it before.”

There was more to it and he knew it - Dustin had told them how blank El’s eyes had been, how she’d been having trouble breathing, the disturbing information she had revealed about Brenner, but if there was anything that Will Byers had learned about El from those dreary March days cooped up in her dark bedroom, it was when to push her and when to be quiet.

Now was a time for pushing, and to his relief, El was responding. She sat up, hunching over and hiding her face in her hands. “I have to say I’m sorry.”

“What? No, you don’t owe her an apology. She understands you got upset, she’s just worried about you.” Will reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, but she resisted, leaning away from him. 

El pulled her knees up and rested her head on them, turning her face away into the Void. “I can never escape,” she said quietly. “No matter how far away I am. I can’t go to a _party_. I can’t have _tequila_. I can’t get out of the lab.”

To Will’s alarm, the blackness of the Void was starting to fade as El talked. Slowly coming into focus were fluorescent lights, white walls, and a door - a solid metal door. The sight of it put fear into Will’s heart.

“El -” he started to say, but she kept talking as if she couldn’t hear him.

“I can’t be _drunk_ ,” she said quietly, spitting out the word, “Because I remember how sometimes when I got upset and fought and pushed people away and they couldn’t get me into the cell -” The lights started flickering, the scene flashing before Will’s eyes: the Void, Hawkin’s Lab, the Void, the Lab, Void, Lab, VoidLab _VoidLab_

“El!” Will said, more forcefully this time. To think he’d ever been jealous of El’s ability to pull physical objects into the Void with her. “El _stop_!”

Colors danced in front of Will’s eyes as abruptly everything went black. They were fully in the Void again. El turned, her head still on her knees, but now she was facing Will. Her pupils were dilated.

“Papa always pushed me,” El said. “But sometimes I was bad, and if I wasn’t tired, they couldn’t put me in the cell. So they had to pinch. I read it in the files. Se-da-tion.”

Will mirrored her posture, crossing arms around his knees. They made eye contact, and sat like that for a minute, breathing together. When he was sure El really saw him he reached a shaking hand out and took one of hers, squeezing it gently.

“That wasn’t in your control,” Will said firmly, not breaking his gaze from El’s eyes. She could go a painfully long time without blinking. “What they did to you wasn’t in your control. How you reacted to being drunk wasn’t in your control. What is in your control is calling Max and making sure she knows you don’t blame her.”

El was quiet. Then she closed her eyes and asked, “What about you?”

Will’s face twisted into a grimace as he tried to decipher what exactly she was trying to ask. He wished Mike was there. Mike seemed to know, instinctively, what she was talking about or asking. After a moment’s consideration, WIll decided she was asking how he felt about drinking,

“It’s never bothered me when you guys drink.” Will said honestly. “Still not my thing though.”

Too many memories of his father and mother screaming at each other, of hiding under Jonathan’s bed, of flinching away from his father’s touch. It was true though, he’d never protested his friends drinking. He’d watched them cry over Dungeons and Dragons, he’d watched them get sick, he’d been the one to load them up into the car so he could get them home safely, and he’d seen both successful and failed attempts at seduction. Max’s birthday really had been fun, even for him. Despite his worry for El and Mike, he’d enjoyed spending time with Lucas and Dustin, and had found peace of mind in making sure they got home safely.

El, however, was shaking her head. “Not Max’s party,” she clarified. “Birthday. Anniversary effect.”

Another phrase he had taught her once upon a time. She’d actually been trying to ask him how he was feeling, if he was also feeling poorly. It had been nine years since his fateful encounter with the Demogorgon. “Oh you know,” Will said airily. “The usual. Insomnia. Nightmares, when I can sleep.”

Insomnia. Nightmares. A creeping paranoia about the woods surrounding his house and what might be lurking in them. Every flashing light made him nervous. The Christmas lights that had already been strung up around town - happening earlier and earlier every year, he swore - made him feel a nauseating dread. He was cold all the time - except for when he was hot, _too hot_ , _he couldn’t breathe the air was stuck in his throat_ \- 

The usual.

It wasn’t just him either. His mother’s cigarette consumption doubled from Halloween to New Year’s Eve, and Hopper had been hanging around more than usual - and that was saying something, since Hopper was already a staple at the Byers’ household, especially once El had moved to Terre Haute.

He’d never begrudge El the birthday celebration she wanted, but he’d been slightly disappointed that Mike had told him to wait until the day after to come out. Will had spent the night before an anxious, pacing mess until he’d finally put on his headphones, cranked the music as loud as the stereo would allow (David Bowie, this time; The Clash permanently soured his stomach) and covered his face with a pillow. He’d even debated the wisdom in paying for a long distance call to Jonathan out in New York, just to hear someone he loved reassure him that even if he was weird, he was okay.

It had been late before he’d dozed off, the music still blaring. The end result was that he’d slept late and woken up with a massive headache, which was the reason he hadn’t arrived by lunchtime like he’d originally told El.

(He’d always thought it a bit ghoulish that El would pick that date to celebrate her unknown birthday. The birth certificate from Doctor Owens had come pre-stamped with January 1st under the birthdate, but Hopper, in an attempt to give her some agency, had assured her that she could celebrate any day she wanted. Will had once asked why she’d picked a day when she usually felt bad to celebrate her birthday, and El hadn’t had the words to explain. She had her reasons, and both Mike and Hopper seemed to understand, and Will had been forced to concede that maybe he was too close to the situation to understand himself.)

El turned to him and smiled. “But you sleep better when you’re here?”

“I sleep better when I’m around you,” Will confirmed. It wasn’t the first time he’d told her that. Maybe it was because he knew first hand what lurked on the other side, but El’s aura of raw power was a balm to his worst nightmares. He wondered if Mike was too smitten to realize how effortlessly El sheltered them all. “Mike felt bad for me and asked if I’d spend more time out here next semester while he’s in class. I think he just didn’t want to say anything about the bags under my eyes.”

El gave him the tiniest smile, reaching out and brushing her thumb over the apple of one cheek. “I’m glad,” she said with her usual bluntness. “Mike is glad too. He should sleep better now.”

“He’s sleeping badly?” Will asked, surprised. Mike hadn’t mentioned that when Will had asked.

El shrugged. “He sleeps. He has stress dreams. I can see them sometimes. I think he’s embarrassed. He doesn’t tell me about them, but I can tell he feels better when you’re here.”

Her hand was still on his cheek. She was always so cold in real life with poor circulation, chilled hands, icy feet, but here in the Void she was warm, almost abnormally so. 

“Does it bother you that he won’t tell you about them?” Will asked. He thought they shared everything - that it was practically a prerequisite for getting married in the first place.

El hummed and rocked her head from side to side as she thought about her answer. “Sometimes I don’t know the words. Sometimes Mike doesn’t know the words. Makes me sad. Makes him angry.” She shrugged. “When he’s ready, he'll find them.”


	3. How Others Must See the Faker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike grudgingly leans on his friends; Dustin crosses a line and is finally confronted by his behavior.

**Chapter 3: How the Others Must See the Faker**

**Will - March 22**

***

**November 5th, 1984**

**After the Gate**

“But Chief!” The sound of Dustin’s voice, high and distressed, pulled Lucas abruptly from sleep. His body was instantly alert, and he staggered from his bed roll on the floor of the Byers’ living room to see what was going on. Dustin sounded upset, and Lucas couldn’t help the way his heart was racing. The last few days had been very stressful.

Dustin was fine. In the kitchen, lit by the barely-risen sun, Hopper was standing in front of the open refrigerator, gesturing to a dead demodog that had been crammed inside. Lucas recoiled. Neither one noticed he was there.

“No buts.” Hopper’s voice was practically a growl. He looked _terrible_ \- he was still wearing his dirty clothes from the night before, and the bags under his eyes only served to highlight the deep lines around his creased eyebrows.

After their trip into the tunnels, their small group had kept vigil at the Byers’, waiting for both Will and El to return. None of them had been able to rest until they laid eyes on their friends for themselves, and it was well after midnight by the time they’d all calmed down, cleaned up, and been given a chance to decompress after all the excitement. Joyce had pulled every blanket, quilt, sheet and pillow out of the linen closet and set him and Max and Dustin up on the living room floor. Lucas couldn’t see a clock, but judging by the light they’d only slept a few hours.

It was obvious that Hopper hadn’t slept at all. He towered over Dustin, who looked desperately defiant even if he was physically intimidated. “You’re lucky I’m the one who found it and not Joyce. Go look in the garage for a shovel, and if you can’t find one then get the one out of my truck, go dig a pit, and burn that thing into ashes, you hear me?” 

“You can’t just burn it!” Dustin protested, gesturing towards the fridge. “Don’t you understand the scientific ramifications? How important this is?”

“What’s _important_ ,” Hopper clenched his fists like he was trying to stop himself from strangling Dustin, “Is keeping Will and El _safe_ , and if the government gets wind that any of these things have escaped their cleanup crew they’ll haul all of us in.”

“But - but -” Dustin looked around wildly for support. He briefly locked eyes with Lucas, who grimaced and shook his head. “This is practically an alien species! The implications in the fields of biology and chemistry and -”

“Let’s burn it Dustin,” Lucas interrupted. He had never felt so exhausted in his life, and not just from the lack of sleep. He was tired of worrying about his friends, of not knowing if they were even alive. The last year of his life had been surreal and sad, and who knew what they would still have to go through to recover from this new trauma. “Don’t you want this to be over?”

Dustin’s face fell. “Yes but… Steve?”

Lucas turned to look at Harrington, slumped at the kitchen table. The first aid kit was open, supplies strewn around. Lucas felt a pang of guilt, and a rush of gratitude. He looked almost as bad as El had the night before, and Lucas knew that was how he would have looked - or worse - if Steve hadn’t intervened when Billy attacked. 

Steve didn’t even lift his head. “Listen to the Chief.”

“Okay. Okay, yeah.” Dustin’s mouth was twisted, and Lucas could tell that while he was disappointed, he knew he was outvoted. Dustin, more than any of them, understood Rule of Law. He turned towards the Byers’ back door. “I’ll get the shovel.”

More guilt. He could step away from the situation and see Dustin’s point - everything from the Upside Down was terrifying and life threatening, but if there was a way to dissect something or otherwise explore in a safe environment, Lucas would have jumped at the opportunity.

He also knew Dustin’s dream of making a big scientific discovery, authoring papers and giving speeches - could even appreciate how tantalizingly close Dustin felt to that dream - but that didn’t change the fact that Will had looked practically skeletal the night before, and El had barely stirred since Hopper had brought her in from the Blazer. 

Will needed to put this behind him, and El - El had put her life on the line for them too many times already. If Hopper said it was dangerous to keep the demodog corpse, then there was no way they could risk it. They owed her everything, and the least they could do was keep her safe.

He followed Dustin out the back door. A fire sounded like the perfect way to put this mess behind them. “I’ll help you dig.”

***

**March 31st, 1987**

**Sophomore Year**

He finally got his chance on a Tuesday afternoon, well after the last bell had rung and the hallways were mostly cleared from the hordes of students catching buses and other rides home. The only people still lingering at their lockers were the students staying for their extracurriculars, and those who were driving themselves home. He didn’t want this to go like his last conversation with Mike, and wanted witnesses even less.

Lucas closed his locker, and looked down at where Mike was standing. Mike’s locker was open, but he was distracted, staring down into his backpack like he was expecting it to tell him the meaning of life. He’d had the same expression for several weeks now - mostly when he thought nobody was paying attention to him.

With a sigh, Lucas straightened his shoulders and walked over to Mike. This was not meant to be a repeat of the week before, when he’d cornered Mike and intruded on his misery, picking at his worry over El until he’d exploded - that had been done to prevent Mike’s temper manifesting somewhere else with real consequences. It had been the initial lancing of the wound, to try and draw the infection out.

This was changing the bandages, to see if everything was healing - if Mike would let him. He already had an idea of how the conversation was going to go, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to try. With a glance to make sure nobody was listening, he leaned in close to Mike and asked, "Everything okay?"

Mike jerked as if he'd been sleepwalking - which he might have been, for all Lucas knew. It was obvious he hadn’t been sleeping well, not with El’s recent issues, not with his anxiety over her return to school. 

“Oh, yeah.” Mike was nodding, and Lucas felt his heart sink. Mike was giving him the same scripted response he gave anyone who asked about El. “She’s doing great. She has to be a little overwhelmed with all the shit people are throwing at her but she hasn’t complained -”

“I know how El is,” Lucas interrupted gently. He’d seen El for himself on her first day back at school, and he’d been able to talk to her a bit while she checked her geometry homework against his. Her eyes had looked like the scared girl’s that they’d found in the rain in 1983, her shoulders slumped with some newly added weight that he didn’t yet know the full depth of.

It had always been curious to Lucas that while Dustin had always been the best at sussing out when someone in the Party was off - when someone was mad or upset - and was willing to face awkward situations to confront and communicate openly in order to keep the Party together, Mike had always been the best at caring for people.

He’d been the first to pack larger lunches to make sure Will got the same snacks they all did even though his mom couldn’t afford them; he’d been the first to read the Dungeons and Dragons manual front to back because Dustin had been embarrassed when he’d first been interested in playing, and he’d been the first of the Party to notice the way adults sometimes talked to Lucas and treated him differently. 

He’d always allowed them to return the favor, in their own ways - kept every single drawing Will gave him, let Dustin redirect his waspish tendencies into Dungeons and Dragons, called Lucas almost every night on the Supercomm before they went to bed - until El had disappeared in front of their very eyes, and overnight Mike had become angry and withdrawn.

“I meant you,” Lucas said, nudging him. “You look like you’re asleep on your feet.”

It didn’t matter how he asked; the question was always the same. Lucas had asked him a thousand different ways since that night in November 1983:

_Mrs. Rogers giving you shit?_

_That’s all you’re going to eat?_

_Why were you up so late?_

_Do you need help studying?_

_Do you need to talk?_

_Are you okay?_

And every time, he’d gotten the same answer.

“I’m fine,” Mike said, rubbing his eyes and biting back a yawn. He hauled his backpack up onto one shoulder and turned away from Lucas. “I have to find El, I want to make sure she gets home.”

***

**June 10th, 1988**

**Summer before senior year**

When he saw the envelope, Lucas's heart leapt. He grabbed it and ran, slinging one leg over the seat of his bike and heading to Dustin's house. It was high noon, and the concrete beneath him was boiling hot with little to no shade to provide relief.

When he turned up the hill to Dustin's driveway, he was pleased to see that Dustin was already out on the porch, waiting for him with a book and a glass of iced tea. It was a relief to see him. There had been a whisper of anxiety in the back of his mind - Dustin hadn’t had much interest in their seemingly friendly competition lately, declining to study for finals together and even sometimes avoiding him in shared classes and lunch.

“Did you get it?” Lucas shouted up the drive, and Dustin pulled an envelope from the back of the book and waved it. Lucas pumped his fist. “Yes! You didn’t open it yet, did you?”

“Nope, we do this together.” Dustin waited patiently as Lucas threw his bike down and joined him on the porch. Together, they eyed the envelopes in their hands. 

It was the final report card of their junior year, and he and Dustin had been neck and neck for first in class ranking since halfway through sophomore year. They had been needling each other ever since they’d scheduled classes for junior year - because Dustin had gotten into AP Biology, and Lucas had gotten into AP Physics, and Lucas was (still) of the opinion that the physics class was more impressive, seeing as it was usually only offered to seniors.

“Go!” Dustin shouted, and together they ripped into their report cards, holding the papers close to their faces as they scanned -

“4.12!” Lucas crowed, flipping the paper around to show Dustin. “Beat that?”

“Damn,” Dustin muttered, pursing his lips. “4.10. That’s bullshit. Ah well.”

“Told ya you should have taken physics.” Lucas watched, slightly disappointed as Dustin merely shrugged and folded his report card back into the envelope.

“I want to major in biology, having AP Bio looks better.” Dustin sat crossed legged, and, lacking anything else to do, Lucas sat down next to him. “Well, there’s always next year. I could still beat you for valedictorian.”

The words were right but the tone half-hearted, as if Dustin himself didn’t really believe them. Unsure of what else to do, Lucas took the words at face value and challenged him:

“Doubt it. I’ve already started writing my speech.” Lucas puffed his chest out and cleared his throat dramatically. “ _Friends, countrymen, lend me your ears_ -”

“Romans,” Dustin interrupted. 

“What?”

Dustin held up his book, which was an anthology of famous monologues. “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. _Richard I._ ”

Lucas rolled his eyes. “We get it, you do theater. I’d like to see you do any better.”

“I will, I already have my speech picked out.” Dustin flipped back to the page he’d been studying and took a deep breath. “ _If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches_ -”

“Wait a second. We covered that one last semester.” Lucas grabbed at the book, but Dustin held it out of his reach. A short wrestling match ensued, where Lucas emerged victorious, sitting on Dustin’s legs and holding the book out of reach. “Ha! I was right! T _he Merchant of Venice_ \- and you’re reading the _girl_ part!”

“What?” Dustin sat up and snatched the book back. “No it’s not, it’s - _Portia_ , fuck!”

He sighed, and tossed the book over his shoulder. “Guess I’m not reading that for fall tryouts then.”

***

**April 6th, 1989**

**Senior Year**

Max was one of the last ones out of the locker room, trailing out of the school with Amy Crawford and Paige Hart. Lucas already had the car warmed against the chilly spring drizzle that had started in the last half hour. Even though the baseball team’s practice had ended early, Lucas and a few others had hung around to watch the softball team and wait for the girls. 

“God,” Max grumbled as she wrenched open the car door and threw her bag in the backseat. “Franklin’s going to kick our ass Tuesday.”

“Franklin has gone to state the last three years,” Lucas pointed out rationally. Hawkins never had and never would be a powerhouse in the sports arena - most kids played because there was literally nothing else to do. “They always kick our ass.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” she muttered before leaning over the console to kiss him. Her lips were cold. “Paige is going to walk everyone if Heather can’t pitch.” 

“Heather is going to pitch, she’ll be _fine_ ,” Lucas reassured her. Max was still frowning, but when they pulled up to a redlight he gave her a stern look that caused her lips to twitch. “Besides, as long as our leadoff batter keeps up her hitting streak, we’re unstoppable.”

“Shut up,” Max scolded, but her cheeks flushed with the compliment, and a real smile finally broke out across her face. “It doesn’t matter if I get on base if no one can bring me in.”

The conversation was normal and easy. They talked about their upcoming games, and school - they were both learning Ohm's law and the related equations regarding voltage and resistance despite the fact that Max was learning it in voc-tech and Lucas was learning it in AP Physics - and this was his favorite time with Max, when they were driving around aimlessly just talking quietly. 

Max was best like this, when she could just be present and feel comfortable in her own skin without any worries about her future or her family weighing her down. There was a soft, sappy part of his brain that felt honored that he was one of the few who got to see this part of Max. 

Most of the time, being in love with Maxine Mayfield felt like running a race, and if he didn’t get her attention or keep pace she would overlook him and move on. Sometimes she fed into his energy, activating his competitive streak, and other times he felt like she was churning him up and overwhelming him, like he could drown in her.

It was the reason they were drawn back together every time they broke up - she felt safe with him, and he felt energized, invigorated by her in a way that no other girl could ever come close. 

The rain had stopped by the time they stopped at the local Sunoco, where Lucas bought them coffee, loading his up with cream and sugar and leaving hers black, and then they drove to the empty lot that was the pool’s overflow parking. There they sat on the hood of the car, holding their coffee close to their faces to ward off the spring chill.

The evening grew dark, and Max’s head dropped onto his shoulder. Her ponytail tickled his neck. “I think me and El are going shopping this weekend.”

“Are you finally going to get a prom dress?” His mother had been bothering him to find out about Max’s dress so she could pick out a vest and tie that matched. He hadn’t yet told her that as far as the Hargroves were concerned, Max’s prom date was technically _Will_.

All the years he and Max had dated off and on, and not once had he formally met her parents. Billy’s reaction had been indication enough for both of them. When they were younger it had bothered him, because he’d wanted something close to what his parents had - family dinners and shared holidays and prom pictures.

It was only since Max had quietly started making plans last year to finish voc-tec and move out of the Hargrove house that he really stopped caring about what could have been - what he cared about now was taking care of Max and making sure she had someone reliable to turn to, and not just because she was a member of the Party. 

It was because he loved her. The realization had taken him longer than he was proud of, but he’d had to bear witness to Mike and El’s developing relationship and it was hard to work through the idea that love didn’t have to be an instant and all-encompassing thing the way it had manifested for Mike and El. 

It could be a ride home from softball practice so she didn’t have to walk, and going to all of her softball games because her parents never showed up. It was memorizing her locker combination as well as his own so that he could leave notes and snacks in her locker, and it was giving her space when her own vulnerability angered her.

It could be Max throwing punches at anyone who tried to call him nerd ( _or worse_ ) or spending her lunch break helping him make flashcards for the AP American history exam, stealing the brightest blood red lipstick from El’s makeup kit to leave kisses on the index cards so he’d think of her while he studied. It was her being able to see when he was close to losing his temper, and getting the rest of the Party to back off accordingly.

It didn’t have to be some grand fairy tale. It could be the two of them wrapped in a blanket in the back of his Cavalier, mapping all of the soft spots that drew sharp inhales and subtle sighs. It was sharing a sleeping bag at sleepovers, occasionally teaming up to derail one of Mike’s campaigns when he was being a pain in the ass, and ditching the rest of the Party at the movies to go sit on their own - not so they could kiss, but so they could make fun of the movie and throw popcorn without bothering anyone (and then maybe also kiss).

It could be sitting quietly on the hood of his car on a Thursday night, drinking crappy gas station coffee while the evening grew darker and darker around them, ignoring the fact that it was their senior year of high school and they were quickly running out of time together.

Lucas looked at his watch. “Shit. We should probably go home. It’s past dinner.”

“I don’t want to,” Max mumbled into his shoulder.

He wrapped an arm around her and rubbed gentle circles into her back. “I don’t want to either.” 

***

**September 1989**

**Freshman year of college**

Chicago was a world beyond Lucas’s wildest fantasies. He’d visited before, growing up - they had family there, and his parents still had friends with whom the Sinclairs kept in touch - but actually living there, being in the thick of it couldn’t begin to compare to what he’d imagined back in Hawkins. 

When they had first started making plans for college, he’d been interested in computers and coding, but as they’d gathered the brochures and visited campuses his father had gently steered him away - said coding was too new, too uncertain, and that getting his MBA would guarantee him a good job right out of school. 

Initially Lucas had resisted, but in the end he had bowed to his father’s wisdom, and that was how he’d found himself at Loyola, his father’s alma mater, rushing the same fraternity. They did their fair share of partying, though it was much more focused on academics than the typical fraternity - not to mention it’s reputation for helping members network when looking for internships and, later, jobs. His father still used contacts that he’d first made when he’d been an innocent pledge, and he’d been out of college for over twenty years.

Lucas had hoped that being a legacy would give him an edge when it came to pledge tasks, but that only went so far - he still did his fair share of carrying lunch trays and laundry and hauling bags of ice, and was eventually assigned to guard The Basketball.

The Basketball was one of the fraternity’s sacred objects - a pledge had to carry it at all times, and make sure that it was treated with the reverence it deserved. He wasn’t allowed to put it down, rest it on the ground, put it in his backpack or let anyone else touch it - the punishment was quarter mile laps between the frat house and the library in a pair of communal boxers. 

The only time it was out of his arms was when he was showering, but ultimately Lucas thought he’d gotten lucky. He felt much worse for Jake, who had been named the Safety Pledge and had to wear a helmet when he was on campus, and Lee, who was the Popeye Pledge and had to drink everything out of a cleaned can of spinach for the rest of the semester.

He and his sponsor were at lunch when the pretty girl from his Spanish class came up to him. Her name was Alicia, and he had noticed her and her smile several times over, though he hadn’t worked up the nerve to talk to her yet. When he and Max had broken up in high school he had gone on dates with other girls, but Hawkins was small, and everyone knew each other from a young age. Now, he felt like he was reinventing himself, and was nervous to find out how this new version of Lucas Sinclair would be judged.

It couldn’t have been any worse than his introduction to Max, right?

Walt elbowed him when he noticed she was approaching, and Lucas, for reasons that would remain a mystery to him for the rest of his life, stood up to greet her, basketball clutched against his chest. She looked surprised at the sudden movement, and Lucas kicked himself.

“You’re in my Spanish class, right?” Alicia asked. She flashed him that smile - the first thing he’d noticed about her, even before he’d realized how very pretty she was - and dropped her eyes to the basketball in his arms. Her voice was soft but confident. “Any chance you have notes from the lecture on Tuesday? I missed the lab completely.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Lucas fumbled, voice cracking. He put one foot up on a chair to balance the basketball and reached for his backpack to find the requested notebook.

“You always hold that thing.” Alicia nodded at the basketball. “What’s going on there?”

“I’m guarding it,” Lucas replied, distracted as he flipped through his notebooks.

“Tell her the truth, Rookie,” Walter intoned, taking a huge, lazy bite of his sandwich. He raised one eyebrow, chewing with his mouth open, and nodded at the basketball.

Lucas looked at his sponsor, chagrined, and sighed. He’d been coached on how to answer if anyone asked about the basketball. “I look for any excuse to show off my ball handling skills,” he recited mechanically and offered her his notebook.

If possible, the grin on her face grew even wider, and she looked impressed. “You played basketball? I played too.”

“Oh - I - um - I didn’t - Uh,” Lucas stammered. His cheeks were burning. “I played baseball.”

For a beat, she studied him - her eyes were a warm honey brown, and Lucas felt a charge that he hadn’t felt since the Snowball with Max in 1984. He was momentarily struck dumb, which meant he had no time to react when, lightning quick, she snatched the basketball out of his arms. Ignoring his alarmed noise and reaching hands, she danced away from him so she could reach into the small pocket of her own backpack and fish out a sharpie.

Determinedly, she scrawled a phone number along the bumpy surface of the basketball and tossed it underhand back to Lucas. It slammed into his chest so hard that he thought his heart had stopped beating - or maybe it was another glance of that smile that had done it. 

“Call me if you want some tips,” she offered, and walked away, his notebook in hand.

Walt stood as Lucas watched her go. “Oh Rookie,” he sighed. “You’re going to have to run so many laps, but it’ll be worth it for a girl like her.”

***

**1992**

**Present Day**

Besides Will’s Pinto, there were three other cars in the driveway - one he recognized as Joyce’s, another as Hopper’s Blazer, but the third, an old Dodge sedan, was unfamiliar. Lucas parked his Cavalier behind Will and shut the car off, but made no move to get out. As the car settled in the twilight darkness, he reached out and took Alicia’s hand, squeezing gently. It was warm for late March, still in the low 50s even as the sun set, and so there was no rush to get into the house and warm up.

“Are you nervous?” he asked. It was the second time she’d ever been in Hawkins, and her first opportunity to meet the Party.

“No,” she replied far too quickly, and Lucas bit back a grin. She was only nervous because she knew that the Party was important to him, and she wanted to make a good first impression. He wasn’t nervous, but even though it was a small party with his closest friends, he didn’t want to downplay her discomfort.

“It’s okay if you’re nervous,” Lucas reassured her. “But I promise they’re all really nice. Even Mike.”

Alicia laughed, even if it did sound a little bit forced. It was his fault really, for waiting so long to introduce them. 

“Listen,” he said, rather diplomatically. “You gave me a chance, even though I was carrying around that dumb basketball, didn’t you?”

She shrugged. “If you’d been the Safety Pledge I wouldn’t have.”

“Poor Jake had helmet hair all semester,” Lucas sighed in mock sympathy, but secretly he was relieved. If she could make jokes, she could power through her nerves. Her wry sense of humor was one of his favorite things about her, and he felt confident she would win his friends over.

She had met his family over the summer. His parents had loved her, and even Erika hadn’t had anything mean to say about her. He had gone home with her to Ohio and met her family over Thanksgiving, and Alicia had assured him that her family had liked him (he _mostly_ believed her).

This was the next step. Dustin had approached him about Will’s birthday at Christmas, and at first Lucas had been hesitant. He hadn’t forgotten what had happened at Max’s birthday, and hadn’t been able to see Mike and El for himself because they had stayed in Terre Haute for Christmas - El simply hadn’t been up for the trip home.

While Max had enjoyed her birthday party, Lucas wasn’t sure what Dustin was playing at by insisting on throwing one for Will as well - Will had never enjoyed a party (at least, not the way Dustin envisioned) and never drank more than one beer when given the chance to indulge. In fact, when the occasion called for it, Will preferred to stay sober and make sure his friends got home safely.

It wasn’t until he’d had a chance to talk to Will directly and learned that the situation wasn’t anything like Dustin had described: his mom was providing the Byers house as a safe space for their small party to hang out like they had done in high school - stay up all night, watch movies, and play games with no responsibilities like they had done almost every weekend before college.

He seemed excited at the idea, almost childishly so, and Lucas had agreed immediately to come home . There were very few things that Lucas Sinclair would not do for Will Byers.

"You remember everything I told you?" Lucas prompted. He was sure she did: Alicia was training to become a nurse, and spent most of her time memorizing: medications, drug interactions, lab orders, or complicated anatomy. He still shivered when he remembered helping her study for her pathophysiology final.

"Yes." She nodded. "Mike might be an ass, but he will like me, and El might not act like she likes me, but she will also like me, and Dustin and Will both like DC, and Max likes basketball, and Will likes the Hobbit."

"Good." Lucas squeezed her hand, but she continued -

"And also some weird thing happened with Will when you all were in middle school and you thought he was dead for a week and that's why Will's mom is the way she is."

"Yeah but we don't talk about that," Lucas reminded her, and she nodded. It wasn't something that he'd particularly wanted to bring up, but with Joyce hosting the party Lucas had felt obligated. Without context, Joyce's anxious near-smothering of Will and Will's casual complacency might be interpreted differently, and Lucas would hate that. "She's amazing, but she literally had a funeral for Will, and she's never really gotten over it."

There were few women that Lucas respected more than Joyce Byers. His own mother was wonderful, smart, and supportive, and Karen Wheeler was always a perfect hostess who made sure the boys ate well, but it was hard to compare them to Joyce and her open-door, no-judgment policy with the Party. It had been hard to go to Will’s funeral knowing he was alive, and he couldn’t imagine that pain as a parent.

“Right,” said Alicia. “And you’re still not going to tell me what this weird thing that happened was?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Lucas said quietly. It was the same excuse he’d given her every time she’d asked why he talked about the Party so much, why, despite the fact that he was firmly wrapped up in his life in Chicago to the point that he spent only a handful of days in Hawkins each year, Lucas remained devoted to the good of the Party, why he was as excited for her to meet the Party as he’d been about her meeting his parents.

“Even though this weird thing that happened is the reason you’re all so close?” she prompted, and Lucas finally let go of her hand and looked away.

“Even if I could talk about it yet, tonight isn’t the right time,” he said. “I want you to meet them first. What happened is too big, it would change the way you look at them.”

“Will it change the way I look at you?” Alicia asked immediately, apprehension evident in her voice. 

Lucas shrugged. “I hope not.”

They fell into silence. She had never argued with his refusal to talk even though he knew she was dying to know what had happened. Once he had explained that it was a huge event in their formative years, that the resulting trauma was very real and something they were still coping with, that even he still had nightmares about it (and even now couldn’t stop himself from looking for smooth, round rocks that would fit in the wrist rocket), she had understood the need to be patient.

One day, he thought, he’d be able to trust her with the full story. First, he wanted to see what the rest of the Party thought of her.

Alicia was the one who broke the silence. “Okay.” She licked her lips. “You ready?”

***

They were not, as Lucas had suspected, the last to arrive.

He didn’t see it immediately. They were swept into the house just as Joyce was leaving - she gave Alicia a warm hug and welcomed her, and then left with Hopper in the Blazer. Lucas gave Will his birthday present - a copy of _The Eye of the World_ , the same book that Alicia had bought for him when they discovered their mutual love of Tolkien - and introduced her to everyone: Will and Julie (who owned the Dodge he hadn’t recognized in the driveway), Max, Mike and El. 

The reason he hadn’t noticed Dustin’s absence was because he was caught up in just how _awful_ Mike and El looked. 

It was more obvious with El. He’d heard from Will that she had been struggling through the winter - flashbacks, nightmares, and a general sense of hopelessness that was making it hard for her to deal with the dark winter days in Terre Haute. Lucas thought he would have been able to guess even if he hadn’t been warned. All the color had been bleached out of her skin except for the dark circles under her eyes. She’d always been slim and waifish, but somehow she’d lost weight - or maybe it was the fact that she was wearing one of Mike’s shirts, an ISU t-shirt that almost reached her knees, that made her look even smaller than usual. 

Mike’s stress, on the other hand, was evident only to someone like Lucas, who knew him better than most. He hadn’t done anything as obvious as lose a dramatic amount of weight, but it seemed as though his shoulders were permanently hitched up, like he was bearing a load that was nearly too much for him to handle. The way El was glued to his side, and his eyes kept darting towards her as if he were afraid she would disappear was a dead giveaway as well. Lucas hadn’t seen him like that since they were sixteen, and struggling to help El recover as she had come back to herself. 

His face relaxed, however, when he saw Lucas. “How’s your semester going?” Mike asked as El reached out to hug him. Will guided Alicia into the kitchen to get a drink, and Lucas couldn’t help watching out of the corner of his eye as they disappeared around the corner.

Lucas made a face. “Getting ready for the GMAT. How’s your internship going?”

“Good.” Mike shrugged, and said no more, and Lucas felt disappointed. He’d been hoping to find an internship himself over the summer, and had hoped Mike would be more amenable to talking about his. He wasn’t sure why he was surprised at this disappointment. For someone who displayed his heart on his sleeve, Mike could hold things in, play his cards close to his chest.

“How long are you going to be in town?” Lucas asked, and Mike shrugged again.

“We’ll head back tomorrow afternoon. Will’s driving us though, so it depends on him.” He sipped at the can of beer in his hand. “On Mondays I have to get up at like, five in the morning so I can be at the hospital in time for the first OR cases.”

“You get to go in the OR?” Lucas asked, face wrinkling. Alicia had done rotations through the OR too, though she had found that she preferred a more high paced environment. 

After the events at Hawkins Middle School, Lucas had developed an aversion to blood. Even a deep cut made him feel anxious, like a demogorgon was going to burst out of the wall at any moment. He thought it telling that no one who had faced the demogorgon had gone into the medical field.

“Nah, mostly we hang out in the halls and wait for something to break.” Mike shook his head. “I learned how to build a dialysis machine though.”

“Thats… freaky.” Alicia returned with Will then, and handed Lucas a can of Budweiser, the same beer that Mike was drinking too. He nudged her, gesturing to Mike. “Mike’s been in the OR too.”

“Not really,” Mike was quick to point out. “I saw like, one knee replacement and had to duck out the second the surgeon pulled out a power drill and started drilling holes in this guy’s knee.”

“Ugh, hip replacements are even worse!” Alicia exclaimed, and Mike looked vaguely ill at the prospect.

Before Mike could reply, there was a bang at the front door, and when Will went to open it Dustin barged in, carrying three overloaded grocery bags.

"I brought the good stuff!" he announced as he crossed the living room into the kitchen, and everyone instinctively followed, seeming as confused as Lucas. Mike's eyebrows were drawn down into a distinct frown, and Max had a neutral expression that Lucas instantly recognized as her _I knew he was going to do the stupid thing_ face.

They crowded into the kitchen, waiting as if Dustin was going to put on a show for them. "Here," he said, reaching into the bags and drawing out bottles. "I brought mixers too - Jack and Coke. No tequila this time though. Julie, I remember you liking pineapple juice and rum in high school, so I brought some of that too. Will, where's -?" He mimed the gesture for a bottle opener, holding the can of pineapple juice.

For a beat - no longer than five seconds, at the most - there was silence, and then Will was fishing in one of the drawers while Julie hunted in the cabinet for cups. Lucas wondered if Dustin even noticed the hesitation among the Party.

Nobody had been planning a wild party tonight. Joyce had bought them a single case of beer - Will _was_ 21, after all, and it was appropriate to mark the occasion even if Will wasn't interested in getting drunk. It had just been a little way for her to treat them like a group of adults. Will himself had admitted that he was only after the nostalgia of their high school sleepovers. While Alicia and Julie weren't into Dungeons and Dragons, there were other board games they could play. 

So what was Dustin doing showing up at the Byers' with bottles of hard liquor?

Lucas frowned as he watched Dustin pour a generous serving of rum and then a splash of pineapple juice for Julie, and asked Max what she wanted. Max's eyes darted to Will, who merely shrugged, before she said stiffly, "Jack and Coke is fine."

"Yes!" Dustin exclaimed, opening the bottle of Coke. "How about you El? You like Jack and Coke."

"No," El said quietly. She was standing behind Mike, clutching at one of his hands like it was the only thing holding her up.

"What was that?" Dustin asked, craning his head back to look for her.

"She said no," Mike answered for her, and Lucas watched as El pressed her forehead into his back, between his shoulder blades. Mike squeezed her hand.

If Dustin read any hostility in Mike's voice, he didn't react to it. Instead he just turned to Lucas. "Lucas - hey! Is this Alicia? Oh man, Lucas never stops talking about you. What are you drinking?"

Alicia glanced at Lucas. She didn't have the necessary backstory - that Will had grown up with an alcoholic father, that drinking wasn't exactly a recreational activity for him - but she could read his discomfort. "I'll stick with beer, thanks."

"Me too," Lucas said, before Dustin could even offer.

If he was disappointed he didn't show it. Instead, Will asked, "Does anyone want to play Nintendo?" and they all migrated back into the living room.

The atmosphere did loosen up. The alcohol, for better or worse, helped. Dustin and Alicia discovered a mutual love of the Chicago Bulls, and got into a heated debate with Max, whose heart still belonged to the Western Conference. Will, Lucas, and Mike got sucked into an intense tournament playing Ring King, trading the controllers between one another. Julie took a couple turns, losing quickly to Will and then Mike and then going to make another drink. El had curled up next to Mike on the floor, braced against Will’s legs, her arm linked around his and her head resting on his shoulder. Lucas didn’t think he’d heard her say ten words the entire evening - and when she did speak, she murmured so quietly Mike had to repeat after her.

A little after nine Lucas watched as she shifted, turning her body so she could put her mouth against Mike’s ear and whisper something to him. Whatever she said, he immediately handed the controller off to Lucas, not bothering to pause the game and making Will squawk and hold the controller over his head as he was jostled. “Will?” Mike questioned, standing up and helping El to her feet. She was looking down at the ground. “My mom’s room,” Will responded immediately, as if he understood what Mike was asking.

“Thanks,” Mike replied. He led El away from the living room, and that was the last Lucas saw of her that night.

Lucas didn’t say anything, continuing to play against Will uninterrupted - once he offered the controller to Julie, who just shook her head and hiccuped, and another time to Alicia, who defeated Will, and then lost to Max - and he was so caught up in their game that he didn’t notice when Mike returned.

Julie had gotten up, and returned with another drink - still pineapple juice and rum, judging by the smell, and when she sat down again she sat so close to Will that their thighs were touching. When Will unconsciously shifted to give her more room, she followed, and rather than be squished against the arm of the couch Lucas got up to get another beer.

“You want one?” he asked Alicia, shaking his empty can at her, but she didn’t even look away from the television as she shook her head.

In the kitchen he found Mike, alone, holding an unopened can of Budweiser and staring down at it as if he were waiting for it to open itself. He looked lost. 

“You okay?” Lucas asked, coming up behind him to reach for another can.

He watched Mike’s face, waiting for the mask to come up again. Lucas had asked Mike some version of that question over a thousand times, with increasing regularity since they were twelve. He’d asked when Will had gone missing, when El had disappeared, when Nancy had gone away to college, when Mike had fought with his parents, and when Mike and El had decided to get married. 

And Lucas hadn’t asked only after the big events in their life - he’d asked when Mike came into school looking tired after nightmares, when Mike talked back to teachers because he was worried about El, when he’d gotten into fights after being provoked, after detentions, after baseball games in the sun, after staying up all night playing dungeons and dragons, after parties when he’d drunk too much, and after the nights he’d slept on the Byers’ couch because his own house had been too tense.

Every single time, Mike had answered with some variation of _I’m fine_ \- sometimes angrily, sometimes sadly, sometimes with a distracted blandness that meant he was shoving some emotion deep down inside himself, where, Lucas knew, it would come screaming out later, whether in character as Boone Brightshield the paladin, or towards Coach Miller for making them play dodgeball in gym class.

This time, however, the mask didn’t drop into place. Instead Mike turned to him and the look on his face was positively _wrecked_ as he said softly, “El’s sleeping, and I just - I don’t know how to help her.”

Lucas settled in, leaning against a countertop and trying to appear casual. If he was too eager, Mike might withdraw. He considered how to respond, before cautiously saying, “She’s been quiet tonight.”

To his amazement, it worked. Mike drummed his fingertips on the aluminum top of the beer can, making a soft clinking noise like rain on a window sill. “She’s been like this ever since Max’s birthday. Getting drunk like that dug up _something_ in her brain, and it’s just been - she’s-” He shrugged, helpless. “It’s like part of her is back in there, in the Lab, you know?”

Lucas popped the tab on his beer and nodded. _Be cool_ , his brain urged him, _be cool_. He felt like he was sharing the room with a large, dangerous dog. 

“She sleeps all the time, she barely eats. Will’s been helping take care of the house -” Mike gestured to the living room, where Max was shouting something at Dustin. “I want to spend more time with her but this internship is too important. If they like me they’ll invite me back for next year, and after next year I can get a real job and we can do whatever she wants. Or needs. But…”

But it was hard to weigh long term investment versus immediate needs. Mike was trying to stay focused on the future, but his wife was floundering. Lucas felt guilty, thinking of the frat house, of month long rounds of Nerf Assassin that he regularly played with his friends, of pulling all nighters just for fun, and watching Saturday morning cartoons with Alicia. Lucas loved college, loved his frat brothers, loved Chicago.

Mike wasn’t telling any stories like that. Lucas had been proud of his friend, proud of _both of them_ for leaving Hawkins and going away to college. He’d even admired Mike’s devotion to El by taking her with him, but it was clear now how much harder he had made things for himself - for them - by choosing this path.

Dustin came into the kitchen then, but Mike didn’t acknowledge him. He came up from behind, reaching for the bottle of Jack Daniels, slowing to listen as Mike spoke.

“I was worried about bringing her home, but she really wanted to be here for Will, but - man, I didn’t even think about Hopper. He hasn’t seen her since Christmas, and his face was…” Mike bit his lip, rubbed his forehead. “I don’t even know what he thinks of me. There has to be more I can do.”

“Hopper knows you’d do anything for El,” Lucas said firmly. If there was anything he was sure of, it was that. Not to mention… “If he thought you weren’t taking care of El he would absolutely make her come back to Hawkins. And I don’t think he’d be very nice about it.”

“If she gets any worse I might have to send her back anyway,” Mike said quietly, staring down at his shoes. “She’d hate me for it, but - I don’t -”

“Man,” Dustin finally made himself known. Lucas’s lip curled, but before he could interrupt Dustin barrelled forward. “You sound so old. You have like, forty year old problems.”

The effect was immediate and noticeable. Mike visibly withered in front of them.

“Yeah,” he said, voice distant, already disengaged. He popped open his beer and turned towards the living room. “Guess you’re right.”

Lucas and Dustin watched as Mike went back to the living room, Dustin with a confused look on his face, Lucas with a sinking heart. 

He turned to look at Dustin, and knew, suddenly, that he had no patience left. He wasn’t sure what Dustin’s plan was, he didn’t know what Dustin’s day to day life was like anymore, and somehow Dustin had turned from the most earnest and sincere person in his life into someone he didn’t recognize anymore.

Dustin saw Lucas looking at him. “What?” he asked, unscrewing the bottle of whiskey and pouring it into his cup. “I was just trying to lighten the mood. He takes everything so seriously.”

Lucas set his jaw, and reached out for Dustin with both hands, taking him by the shoulder and pushing him towards the backdoor. “Can I talk to you please?”

“What?” Dustin protested as he was shoved outside, still holding the bottle of Jack Daniels. “What are you - get off me!”

Lucas closed the door behind him and leaned against it, looking at Dustin through the dim light. He licked his lips and thought about where to start.

Dustin had been one of the best people to talk to when they’d been teenagers. Lucas remembered laughing the first time Dustin had repeated Steve’s advice of _pretend you don’t care_ because that flew in the face of who Dustin Henderson was at his core. 

The year after the demogorgon, when El had been gone and Mike had been sullen and angry and Will had been quiet and weird, Dustin and Lucas had spent hours talking: about El, if she could still be alive, and if so how they could get to her, about Mike, and the need to be patient with him, about Will and their shared helplessness.

More than that, they had talked about themselves: about shared nightmares, about their newfound aversion to guns, about the fact that they were both scared of the science lab, that they were both scared for Will, and of Mike.

(“He jumped off a cliff for me,” Dustin had whispered one time at the lunch table, watching Mike in the lunchline. “Now I’m scared he’ll jump off a cliff for himself.”) 

Dustin had been the only reason Lucas had stayed sane that year. The year after the mind flayer, however, Lucas had found himself talking to Max more and more, building their bond through their shared experience. He and Dustin had still talked, but it became less and less about alternate dimensions, monsters, and the Lab, and more about homework, movies, Dungeons and Dragons, and girls.

The sheepish young man in front of him was not that Dustin Henderson.

“What happened to you man?” Lucas blurted out, shaking his head. “This - this isn’t -”

“What do you mean?” Dustin asked, hackles raised.

“I mean -” Lucas reached out and snatched the bottle of Jack Daniels from Dustin’s hand. “You brought liquor to the Byers’. You know about Will’s dad. Did it ever occur to you how stupid that was? How Mrs. Byers might feel when she came home in the morning and saw that?”

“It’s a party,” Dustin said lamely, reaching half-heartedly for the bottle.

“No. No, the Dustin Henderson I know would never bring liquor to the Byers’ in the name of a party.” Lucas shook his head, refusing to hand the whiskey back. “And the Dustin Henderson I know wouldn’t have shut down Mike that way after years - and I mean _years_ \- of trying to get him to open up to us. So what’s going on?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. It was a joke.” Dustin pulled away then, crossing his arms.

Lucas ran a hand over his face and sighed. They stood together in silence for almost a minute, listening to crickets and shivering in the early spring night. Finally he took a step so he could stand next to Dustin. They looked out into the backyard. 

He thought of the first morning after the mind flayer, when El and Will had been feverish, sick and exhausted. Hopper had moved the both of them into Joyce’s bedroom, where they could be watched together, and Mike wouldn’t be pried away no matter what orders, pleas, and threats Hopper, Nancy, and then Hopper again had tried to give him. With nothing else to do, Lucas and Dustin and Max had started to help clean up the house, and when Hopper had discovered the demodog in the fridge he’d forced them to burn it in the backyard.

He remembered the way Dustin had protested, how he’d begged Hopper to leave it for the advancement of science and the sake of humanity. Hopper couldn’t be moved - it was too dangerous, for both El and Will, and Hopper didn’t give a damn about the rest of humanity if it ensured the safety of those two.

Lucas had heard many monologues over the ensuing days about the potential knowledge that had been lost to them.

“I’m sorry,” Lucas said finally. “I’ve been a bad friend. I should have talked to you about this in high school, but I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

“What do you mean?” Dustin sounded surprised.

What Lucas meant was that their sophomore year of high school, he and Dustin had been neck and neck for salutatorian. Their GPAs had been within decimals of each other, and it had morphed into a friendly contest to see who would actually claim the title.

What Lucas was that junior year, Dustin had spoken glowingly of the colleges he was applying to - MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and UPenn were at the top of his list, and he wasn’t bothering with a safety school. He was going to major in biology and capitalize on everything they’d been through with the Upside Down.

What Lucas meant was that senior year, all that talk had gone away. Dustin’s grades had dropped, and he’d stopped speaking of college. When anyone brought it up, Dustin had simply said he was taking a year off. Lucas had thought about forcing the issue then, but with his own plans to go to Loyola cemented, he didn’t want to sound like he was bragging, had wanted to save Dustin’s dignity.

That had been the wrong thing to do, Lucas could see now, and so he said, “I mean, why are you still here? The Dustin I know was going to be a hot shot scientist and explore the world. You’re so much bigger than Hawkins, why are you staying here? You’re drinking too much, and you’re not acting like our bard anymore.”

“I’m not acting like our bard?” Dustin asked, incredulous. “Are you kidding me? I’m the one trying to keep the party together!”

He spread his arms, gesturing around them. “This party happened because I made the calls! Did you come home for Will’s birthday last year? Or the year before? Would you have come this year if I hadn’t called you?”

“That’s not fair,” Lucas said, striving to keep calm. “I’m in college.”

“And we’re still here!” Dustin argued.

“Exactly,” Lucas said seriously. “Why aren’t you in college?”

The question took all the fight out of Dustin. He deflated, his face twisting up in an ugly expression, and Lucas watched as he fought back tears. Finally Dustin said, voice cracking, “I didn’t want to be one of the bad men.”

“What does that even mean?” Lucas asked, confused. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting Dustin to say, but that wasn’t it.

“It means all this scientific knowledge, all this stuff we know about now - who’s using it? The government? And for what? To hurt people? Like El? Is that all that’s out there for me?” Dustin’s voice wavered dangerously. 

Lucas scrambled to come up with a response, but before anything occurred to him Dustin jumped down from the porch, scrambling in his pockets for his car keys. “Keep the bottle,” he said. “Tell everyone I said goodnight.”


	4. As They Try to Change Their Worlds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike loses his temper.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahahaha hey just remember that I promise that everyone ends up in a good place by the end of the fic promise.
> 
> This chapter does discuss Max's home life with an alcoholic, but does not contain anything graphic. Just a heads up.

**Chapter 4: As They Try to Change Their Worlds**

**Mike - April 24th**

***

**October 20th, 1986**

**Sophomore Year**

When she slipped through the door she could hear her mother and Neil talking quietly in the kitchen. Shoring up her courage and holding her breath, Max hitched her backpack higher onto her shoulder and tried to walk directly past, eyes straight ahead.

“Max!” She stopped and exhaled, then, steeling herself, turned back to the kitchen.

Her mother was staring down at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee clasped between her hands. Neil, however, was glaring with his arms crossed. “Is that how it is now? You don’t even say hi to me and your mother?”

“No, sorry,” Max answered, training her eyes on the center of the table. “Hi Mom. Hi Neil. How was your day?”

“It was fine sweetie. How was school?” Her mother smiled at her, serene and disarmed, as if she couldn’t feel the tension in the room.

Neil was in a mood.

Max had never thought that she’d be in a situation where she’d ever miss the presence of Billy Hargrove, and yet here she was, not quite two years after he’d skipped school one Friday and disappeared with his Camaro back to California, and Max almost wished for his destructive presence.

Billy had been a lightning rod. Without him, Neil had nowhere to focus his energy, and the loss of control over Billy had made him paranoid and suspicious that Max would run away too. Which meant he had to know her every move, imposed a strict curfew, and hadn’t allowed her to get an afterschool job or a driver’s license so she wouldn’t have the money or the means to get away from him. He always framed it in terms of her safety and a desire for her to focus and succeed in school - which made him sound reasonable to her mother, who went along with all of his decisions.

Max had chafed under his scrutiny, and as a result spent as little time at home as possible despite the curfew. Her mother tried to deflect Neil’s attention, but the fact was she was rarely out of his sight and under his thumb in a way Max couldn’t be as a normal teenager who had to go to school. He was far more interested in Max and who she was friends with and if anyone was putting any strange ideas in her head - strange ideas like that Neil could ever be wrong, or that Max could do better than the Hargrove house, or could ever be an independent adult.

The fact was Max knew these things already and had been validated by her friends an endless number of times, but she was smart enough to know that she didn’t have the ability to challenge him yet. All she could do was count down the days until she turned eighteen, and plan her escape in the meantime.

“School was good.” Max tugged at the strap of her backpack anxiously. “I have a big history test tomorrow, so I’m going to get some studying-”

“So where were you?” Neil interrupted, the challenging tone to his voice unmistakable.

Her eyes darted to the clock over the sink. “I’m not late,” she said automatically, before she could think about it.

“I didn’t ask if you were late,” Neil informed her. He picked up his fork and stabbed moodily at his plate. “I asked where you were. Can’t a father ask his daughter how she’s spent her day?”

Even with Neil, her life in Hawkins wasn’t all bad. Maybe if Billy had surrounded himself with the type of people that she had, found his own Party, he wouldn’t have felt the need to run.

Lucas was a balm, a steady, calming influence when she felt like she might snap from the tension. They weren’t a perfect couple - he hated that they frequently had to hide their relationship, going as far as dropping her off a block away from her house so Neil didn’t see his car, and sometimes when he grew really frustrated they fought - but when Neil went on a bender Lucas felt like the most stable thing in her life.

The rest of the Party was just as important when it came to keeping her sane. Dustin, smart and funny and sincerely kind was always good for a laugh, for checking her algebra homework, or challenging her to a Donkey Kong tournament. Will, with almost nothing of his own and still eager to share, had made it clear that Max was always welcome to escape to the Byers - and Max had taken him up on it several times. Even Mike, consistently a thorn in her side, was generous and loyal in a way that made Max feel safe with him even when they were minutes away from strangling each other.

But it was El who was the most valuable of all, and it wasn’t just for her blind trust and how special that made Max feel, or the intensity with which she tackled her own problems, which gave Max courage and kept Neil from wearing her down completely, or her sense of humor, which had blossomed into something so close to her own.

“Sorry, I was at the Hoppers’ house,” Max said, watching Neil for the grimace he made every time she mentioned El. “We were just doing homework. Her dad dropped me off.”

Neil didn’t reply, but her mother’s smile grew even brighter. “That’s so nice of the chief to chauffeur you around.”

People like Neil Hargrove, Max had figured out, enjoyed having power over others. They didn’t respond to kindness, or cruelty, or rewards, or punishment. They only responded to power, and people who had more of it than they did.

Police Chief Jim Hopper had much more power than Neil Hargrove did and Neil knew it. He hated Max’s friendship with El, and Max wasn’t sure he had enough self awareness to know precisely why.

“Yeah, he’s nice,” Max agreed. “Um, I already ate with them, and I really need to read this chapter before bed -”

“Okay honey. There’s leftovers if you’re hungry later.” Her mother was still smiling, and Max wondered if she possessed the self awareness that Neil lacked.

Somehow she didn’t think so.

***

**September 14th, 1987**

**Junior Year**

She swung by the guidance counselor's office on her way to lunch, and was still studying the brochure she’d picked up when Will and Dustin arrived to the lunch table. Dustin picked up the brown bag that contained her lunch and sniffed it, making a face.

“Liverwurst.” He dropped the bag back on the table.

“Braunschweiger,” Max correctly absently, not looking up at them.

“Same thing,” Dustin dismissed.

“It’s really not-” Will pointed out, but Dustin had already moved on to the next subject.

“What’s that? Are you going to do voc-tech?” Dustin plucked the brochure out of her hands. Max just shrugged, despite the fact that she had already mentally committed. Dustin’s face lit up. “You’d only go to school half-day next year? Holy shit, why don’t more people do this?”

“Asshole, I’d still be in school in the afternoons too, just at the community college. They bus you up there after lunch,” Max answered, flipping him off. She wasn’t looking to get out of school - just the opposite, in fact.

She was looking to get out of her house.

While Neil Hargrove wasn’t the worst thing that had ever happened to her - that honor would forever go to Billy, and that still counted her terrifying experiences with demodogs and the Upside Down - he was easily the biggest challenge in her life, and a potential roadblock to her future. The only reason she’d had any fun - or freedom - had been the efforts of the Party, and her connection to El and Chief Hopper. She had fought tooth and nail to join the softball team, taken babysitting gigs under the table to supplement her allowance, and gotten Joyce Byers to take her to the DMV for her driving test. Neil still didn’t know she had her license.

College had certainly never been discussed in their house. Max didn’t know what Neil thought would happen once she graduated, but she didn’t intend to hang around and find out.

Their junior year had started just a few short weeks ago, but it seemed like all Dustin and Lucas could talk about were what colleges they were going to visit. Dustin was talking about going as far as Massachusetts, and Lucas was talking about universities in New York City, Louisville, and Raleigh. Even Mike was joining in, to a lesser degree - his parents wouldn’t pay for anything but a state school (“My dad says that’s why they exist.”) but he didn’t seem too put out about it.

On the other side was Will, who was happy to contribute to the discussion but didn’t seem to care about his own plans, and El, who really only cared about where exactly Mike was going.

It had slowly dawned on Max that she was going to have to figure out what she wanted as well, which had inspired a mild panic - she had thought she still had time, they still had two years of high school left! But to hear Lucas and Dustin tell it, she was already behind.

She hadn’t given much thought about what she actually wanted to do. Her grades were best in math and sciences - mostly because she didn’t have the patience to sit and focus on writing essays when she could be out running around with her friends - but to have some sort of career? She could be a teacher, or a nurse - both stable jobs that would get her a real paycheck so she could live on her own, but she didn’t think Neil would let that happen, and she knew she couldn’t afford it on her own.

Briefly, she’d even toyed with the idea of asking her mother for guidance, but had quickly discarded the thought after realizing it would be impossible to get her mother alone - or worse, she might tell Neil about Max’s worries about the future and he’d watch her even more closely.

“Are you going to be a cosmetologist?” Dustin snickered, and Max shot him a dirty look and snatched the brochure out of his hand.

“Yeah, maybe I’ll start with that Halloween wig you call a haircut,” Max threatened.

“Well it’s not like you’re going to be an electrician.”

“That’s a little sexist, don’t you think?” Max snapped, but her heart was sinking. She already knew which way the guidance counselor would try to lead her, but she couldn’t see herself standing in a shop all day with gossiping women. Her nose wrinkled as she imagined Mike’s mom and her gaggle of unbearable friends coming in and having to play nice in hopes of a decent tip. “If I want to be an electrician, I’ll be a goddamn electrician, and I’ll be good at it.”

She didn’t want to be an electrician, but she wanted to live in the Hargrove house even less, and if this was what it would take then she would do it.

***

**June 29th, 1989**

**Summer after senior year**

Despite the fact that it was the first time they had seen each other since his wedding the week before, Mike was quiet as he followed Max up and down the aisles of the local Goodwill. This was mostly fine with Max, who had heard second hand from El about Mike and his troubles with his parents, and had been wrestling with whether or not she should try to bring it up, to see if he wanted to talk.

It wasn’t a can of worms she was particularly interested in opening, but he was currently doing her a huge favor and she felt like she wasn’t being a very good friend by ignoring his problems - especially when he was so clearly unhappy. She'd asked his help in picking up a coffee table from Goodwill for her efficiency. Lucas's Cavalier wasn't big enough, and despite the fact that he didn't always have access to the station wagon anymore, Mike had somehow made it happen.

It was supposed to be a quick trip - run to Goodwill, pick up the table, and drop it off at the Byers, where Max was also storing the bed frame, nightstand, and small set of drawers that she'd been able to scavenge. Joyce had offered her the mattress from Jonathan's bed - he was coming home from New York less and less, and while she had at first hesitated Will’s insistence had finally convinced her to accept it gracefully. God knew she wasn’t in a position to turn down any help she could get.

Her escape from the Hargrove household thus far was carefully planned and cultivated so as to not tip off Neil. As far as she knew, he had no idea she had already completed voc-tech and joined the electrician's union and that she planned to move into her efficiency the first weekend of August. No one knew of her plans except for the Party, Joyce Byers, and Jim Hopper - all the people that she trusted with her very life.

There was the smallest seed of guilt that if Neil didn’t know she was moving out, then her mother didn’t either. It would break her heart and Max knew it - but she had witnessed first hand the slow erosion of her mother’s opinions and social life at the hands of Neil, and knew that anything she learned would immediately be reported to him. It was safer to beg for forgiveness than permission.

"Can you help me with this?" she asked, bending over to pick up the edge of the table, then noticed the other one behind it. Reaching to see the price tag, she asked, "Hey, there's another. Do you need one for school? We could just get them both now."

The question seemed to confuse Mike. His brow wrinkled. "What for?"

"El said you had an apartment. In Terre Haute," Max replied. "Is it furnished? Because that's a good price for that little table."

It was strange watching the change that came over Mike's face. In the span of seconds, he went from confused to surprised to the resigned, gaped-mouth shock of someone who had just realized that they hadn't studied for a test that they were absolutely about to fail. His face went white.

"Hey, what's wrong?" Max straightened up, reaching out to grab his arm in case he pitched forward.Two bright red spots were developing high in his cheeks. "Are you sick?"

He sat down hard on the coffee table and braced his elbows on his knees, hands covering his mouth. Max looked around wildly for something that he could throw up in, but when he took his hands away he merely said hoarsely, "The apartment isn't furnished."

"Okay." Max looked around for answers, and, finding none, prompted, "Okay? So you can join me on the thrift store runs. Or you can look in Terre Haute. I'm sure there's thrift stores out there."

Mike straightened up, exhaled hard, and hunched over again, hands clasped behind his neck. "I forgot about furniture. I figured out how to get married and how to afford an apartment and afford my first year of school but I forgot furniture."

"Okay. So we'll find you some. What's the big deal?" She sat down on the table next to him, ignoring the curious looks from other shoppers. Cautiously she rested a hand on his back, between his shoulder blades.

"I _married_ El," Mike said, mostly to the ground in front of him.

"Yeah, I was there. You cried."

He failed to respond to her teasing tone. "I married her so I could take care of her, but I forgot furniture. If I forgot furniture, what else am I forgetting? She's going to follow me to Terre Haute and I'm going to be in class all day and she's going to be home alone with nothing and she's going to realize how completely stupid this was and-"

"Okay, let's stop there," Max interrupted, trying to stem Mike's panicked stream of consciousness. Clearly the furniture wasn’t the point but - "We can fix this. All we have to do is get you guys some stuff. Who cares if you didn't think about it until now? You've had bigger things to worry about."

"It's not like we can live in a blanket fort out in Terre Haute Max," Mike croaked, but some color was starting to come back into his face.

"Why not?" Max asked blithely. "El would probably love that.”

“Oh.” Mike’s lips twitched, as if remembering some distant memory. “Yeah, she probably would actually.”

“More than that,” Max barreled on, determined not to cede the ground she had gained. “This is the exact type of thing you’re supposed to talk to your wife about. Since, you know, it’s both of your lives? And it’s like a partnership?”

“That’s a good point.” She wasn’t sure if she had actually made Mike feel better, or just confused him out of his hysteria, but either way, she was satisfied. The expression on Mike’s face was slowly morphing into the dumb dopey smile he got when he was thinking about El, and that was good enough for Max.

“Come on.” She stood up, and gestured to the table he was sitting on. “Help me with this, and then you can go home to your wife and figure out where you’re going to get furniture.”

***

**August 4th, 1989**

**Summer after senior year**

The single window in her efficiency faced East, and so the rising sun cast a strong beam into the room, raising the temperature by 10 degrees even though the ceiling fan was running. Max woke first, sweating and uncomfortable. The added weight of Lucas's body heat wasn't helping either - but she didn't want to wriggle away, not yet.

It had taken hours yesterday for the adrenaline to wear off. She wondered if Neil had figured out that she wasn't coming back to the house. She wondered if her mother was worried yet. At some point, she'd have to call them and tell them. She couldn't afford a landline; she'd have to find a payphone.

The rest of the Party had been there in the morning, helping her with the heavy lifting - not that there was much, and what little she had was mismatched and second hand. But she had a bed, and a little table and some chairs, an area rug and some pots and pans. At the last minute, Lucas had surprised her with a small television - the one that had originally been his bedroom. She had thought he was taking it to college, but instead he parked it on her little table and had spent much of the afternoon arguing with Dustin and Will about how to position the antenna for the best reception.

Slowly, they had filtered out - Mike and El first, with Will trailing behind them, and then Dustin, who held on until after nine before finally leaving Max and Lucas alone.

"You okay?" Lucas had asked the moment the door had shut behind Dustin.

"Yeah," she answered, and was surprised to realize that she meant it. It wasn't until now, when everything was truly said and done, that she understood how she had expected Neil to completely ruin her plans - either by finding out about voc-tech, finding her drivers license, or finding the furniture she'd hidden at the Byers. There were so many ways it could have gone wrong so many times.

But it hadn't. She had her own place, nowhere near the Hargroves. She had a job, and her own income, and as a result, a certain amount of freedom that she was sure Neil would have never granted. She wondered if her mother could ever understand why it had to be this way, or if she was so far under Neil’s control that she would only match his anger. Either way, that was a confrontation for another day.

Now, in the bleak light filtering through the blinds she had to acknowledge the other truth, buried even deeper than her fear of Neil Hargrove: that once Lucas left this morning, their relationship was over.

They had only acknowledged it once, the night after Mike and El had told the Party that they were getting married. It had been hard, but not impossible, to face the reality: that Lucas was going to Chicago, and had made that choice without consulting or thinking of Max. Max was going where the union told her she was going - and she had never planned on going to Chicago with Lucas anyway.

Any fleeting thoughts of trying to maintain a long distance relationship shriveled in the face of Mike and El's devotion to one another. She loved Lucas but not like that, and right then, 18 and fresh from high school and on the cusp of real adulthood, it seemed almost impossible that she ever would.

So they had confronted it head on, and they had talked about it, and they had both cried - even though Lucas would never admit it, and had trembled with the effort to stifle himself.

After that terrible night, they had simply put it away. They had the rest of the summer together and with the Party, and he had devoted himself to helping her move out of the Hargrove house safely. Somehow, she had tricked herself into believing this day would never come.

Except it had, and now she and Lucas had to face it.

He woke once the sunbeam moved and lit his face. Yawning, he stretched his arms and legs, muscles shifting against her skin. Involuntarily, her mind reminded her - sleepovers at the Wheelers, dozing in the back of the Cavalier, all the times they had shared a sleeping bag and woken up together the same way. A dozen sensory memories that would eventually fade into pleasant high school nostalgia.

When he straightened out his arms, cracking each knuckle individually, he caught her gaze. "Hey."

"Hey,” she replied, giving him a small smile.

"Hey,” he repeated, and for a half second there was awkwardness as she saw the realization enter his eyes, and he understood what was happening, what today meant.

Her heart lurched, and before she could say anything Lucas rolled out of her little twin bed. He reached down and picked up a pair of sweatpants, pulling them over his boxers. Not bothering with a shirt, he stumbled towards the kitchen counter, reaching for the single indulgence she had allowed herself: a coffee maker. There were way too many overnight shifts and way too much overtime for her to avoid it. It made more sense for her to make her own and carry a thermos instead of buying it everyday.

Something was holding her to the bed. She just watched while he quietly made a pot of coffee, and pulled out the battered pan that she'd found at Goodwill and a carton of eggs, frying them just the way they each liked: over easy for him, scrambled for her.

He'd always been like that, even during the times they had broken up. She wasn't sure if he'd always been that way, or if it had just been the trauma of losing Will and then El, but he was protective of his friends, and especially her. Even when they were fighting - which happened, because Lucas was proud and competitive, and Max never yielded more than an inch to him - he made sure she always had a ride home, and money for lunch, and a safe place to go when Neil was drunk. He made sure she had a cover story when she broke curfew, let her practice driving in his car when she wasn't allowed to get a license, and had quietly learned about things she liked, foods and books and colors, and never forgot her birthday.

She was more scared to lose the sturdy foundation that Lucas gave her than she was to secretly move out of her parent's house and support herself.

Neither one of them acknowledged it. Instead they stayed in her bed, breakfast plates balanced awkwardly on their knees, talking about her upcoming work schedule, about Mike and El's own search for affordable furniture, about Will and Dustin and their mothers and the very fundamental differences between the two.

"I hope I see them," Max risked voicing the fear she'd been nursing deep in her heart. "I hope they come out to see me. I'll take the bus back to Hawkins but -"

"But you're not going to risk your stepdad seeing you," Lucas said roughly. "You need to take care of yourself first. They both have cars. They can come see you."

"I guess." There was an unspoken question there - _will you come see me?_ \- but she swallowed it down. Lucas was bigger than Hawkins, and deserved a chance to succeed in college without worrying about her or her feelings. She didn’t want to put him in a position where he felt compelled to lie to her.

He didn't want to leave, and she didn't want him to - but he'd promised his mother he'd be home for lunch because they still needed to go shopping for his dorm. His move-in date was a week away, and he’d put off much of his own preparation to help his friends instead.

Her throat closed up when she realized she probably couldn't make the trip back to Hawkins to see him one last time.

She walked him to the door, and there was another moment of awkwardness when he instinctively leaned forward to kiss her and she froze. In the span of a breath she considered what to do, before Lucas decided for her. He kissed her on the cheek, reached for the doorknob, and said, "See ya Mad Max."

"See ya Stalker." She forced the words out in a weak tone, willing her voice not to crack.

The door closed behind him.

***

**1992**

**Present Day**

"Do you have to do that in here?" Dustin asked, nose wrinkling at the smell of acetone filling up the car.

"Sorry," Max said, not very sorry at all and not stopping as she rubbed at her nails with a damp paper towel. "El's going to want to paint my nails, I want them clean."

She and Dustin were driving out to Terre Haute to visit Mike, El, and Will. It was Mike's birthday, but it was also a Friday, which meant Max'd had to work, so they were enduring the tail end of rush hour in Indianapolis in order to get to Terre Haute by dinner. Dustin was a jittery mess, his energy unbridled and scattered - and to be honest, he was making Max nervous.

She still wasn’t sure going to Terre Haute was a good idea. Dustin had called her three times before she’d agreed to go. "He's going to kill you,” she'd said bluntly the first time. "You saw El at Will's birthday. You know how insane his school schedule is. And he _hates_ surprises."

"I owe him," Dustin had argued. "I'm going to offer to shake his hand."

"What happened?" Max had asked, and it hadn't been the first time - she'd asked Lucas, and then Mike, and hadn't been able to get a straight answer. "Is that why you just disappeared from Will's?"

"No," Dustin had replied immediately. Followed by an unsure, "Yes. I don't know. I just want to do something nice for him and El. And this is El approved. She’s the one who invited us. If his wife thinks it’s a good idea, then it’s a good idea."

That was when Max had agreed.

If nothing else Max was dying to see El, who still, three years out of high school, was her very best girl friend. She knew Mike didn’t particularly care about turning 21, which meant she could pull El aside for some one on one girl time. Becoming an electrician had not widened her social circle outside of her roommates and her coworkers - the vast majority of whom were men.

Max liked her job. It kept her busy, and her fellow electricians were generally good people. They liked her too, and watched out for her: the few times her stepfather had called around, tried to ask about her, find out where she was working, they had shut him down quickly and made sure Max had a partner on site with her.

It hadn't escaped her notice, however, that when she talked to her friends, Mike talked about his internship and college credits, and Lucas talked about his fraternity and the school radio, and Will talked about watercolors versus charcoal, and Max didn't have any stories like that.

Max had the house she was renting with Joey and Bobby, and she had her independence, and she had happy hour with her apprentice class every third Friday, and that was pretty much it. Most of her energy went to saving for a real car and paying bills. Sometimes it bothered her, that her mental efforts were now consumed with the minutiae of adult life, that she'd never been given a chance to decide what she actually wanted to do - or even figure out what she was really good at. She was good at her job, but it wasn’t something she would have chosen under other circumstances.

Only her thumbs were left. Rubbing at the chipped pink polish, she said to Dustin, "You don't think Lucas is going to come out?"

"I called him," Dustin said, but there was a tone to his voice that immediately raised Max’s hackles. It was the same tone he used when he said _I won’t be out late_ , or _We can hang out this weekend_ before he went AWOL for a month.

“You didn’t call him, did you?” Max asked, feeling stunned at the realization. Dustin’s fixation on their 21st birthdays had hinged on the good of the Party - to find that he’d so deliberately excluded Lucas was almost a physical shock. He bit his lip, cheeks splotching red, and Max physically turned in her seat and glared at him. “What _happened_ between you two? Why are you so mad at him?”

“I’m _not_ mad at him,” Dustin insisted. “I just… didn’t want to bother arguing with him when I know he’s busy with school.”

"And you didn’t want to listen to him lecture you about what a bad idea this is?" Max guessed, and Dustin frowned at the road.

"Stop saying that!" he scolded, slapping at the steering wheel. "And if you think it's such a bad idea, why are you even here?"

Unsurprisingly, it had been Dustin’s idea to surprise Mike for his birthday - whatever had happened at Will’s birthday, he was determined to try and shake Mike’s hand and make up. Unsurprisingly, when he’d first called Will to coordinate he’d run into a brick wall - Mike was too stressed and El wasn’t well and they were just barely keeping afloat this semester.

Surprisingly, it was El who had insisted in the end. As the weather had turned toward spring, so had El. Her energy was returning, her spirit slowly picking up as winter melted away. El wanted to see them - and more than that, she wanted to do something nice for Mike’s birthday. She had overridden Will’s objections and invited them out. Mike’s birthday fell on a Friday, and they could take the entire weekend to celebrate.

That had been more than enough to convince Max, who was eager to see El in recovery for herself. The sight of her at Will's birthday had been disheartening, and Max hadn't been able to shake the lingering guilt that it was her fault that El was like this in the first place.

She had just wanted to celebrate her 21st birthday like any other young adult - especially since she wasn't going to get much more in terms of normal college experiences. In her enthusiasm, she seemed to have triggered a depression in El similar to the one she'd gone through when they were sixteen.

The worst part was that El didn't blame Max at all - El blamed _herself_ for not being able to escape the lab. She'd thought she'd ruined Max's birthday, and what resulted was a vicious cycle of guilt: Max, for thinking she'd hurt El, and El, for thinking she couldn't be the friend Max needed.

So Max was prepared to endure Mike Wheeler's snarking about unexpected guests if it meant that she could see El. And he would complain, even if he was happy to see them, there was no question about it.

"This is them, right? That's gotta be Will's car," Dustin muttered, pointing out the familiar green Pinto, parked on the street instead of behind the building.

Max helped him carry everything they’d brought up the steps - aside from a duffel bag, he had an air mattress and several bags of groceries. He'd called Mike’s mom and told her about their plans to surprise Mike, and she had baked them a birthday cake and prepared several frozen meals for them to reheat later.

It was El who answered the door when they knocked, and Max heard Dustin's sharp inhale when he saw her.

El looked so much better than she had at Will's birthday the month before - though still not as good as she had looked at Max's birthday in September. But she was dressed nicely, with a pair of black leggings under her denim skirt and her favorite black sweater over top. Max had seen that sweater before, and knew that it had been much tighter that last time she had seen El wearing it, but it wasn't baggy anymore. She'd gained some weight back, which made her cheeks look full again, and there was a healthy blush on her face even though the winter paleness hadn't yet faded into her summer tan.

El was better. Not as good as she could be, but better. Max could understand now why Will had relented when she’d wanted them to come visit - more than that, she could understand the impulse to give El anything she desired, especially considering that she had spent the last few months not wanting much at all.

"Come in, come in!" She ushered them through the living room, where Will was sitting on the couch, and guided them into the kitchen. "Mike has a late lab, so he won't be home until later."

Will joined them, leaning against the entrance to the kitchen. "Was your drive okay?"

"Yeah, traffic sucked but it was fine," Dustin told them, unpacking the cake and handing the rest of the bag to El. "Here are some dinners from Mrs. Wheeler. She said they're all to freeze and reheat when you need them."

El dumped the bag on the counter so she could lift the cover off the cake stand, biting her lip at the sight of the impeccably iced cake that waited underneath. It was iced in vanilla, with plain red lettering on the top: HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICHAEL.

"She said it's chocolate cherry," Dustin said with the sort of gravity one might expect announcing the birth of a child.

"Perfect." El beamed, covering the cake again and throwing her arms around Dustin. "He'll love it."

"Thank you!" Dustin heaved an exaggerated sigh and returned the hug enthusiastically. "Everyone keeps saying that Mike will be mad."

"Yes he will," El agreed, and Max couldn't help smirking as Dustin's face fell. "At first. But he's so mad about school all the time. I wanted something that would make him happy."

"Is school going badly?" Max asked, surprised at the way El had announced that so casually. When they’d talked last month, he wasn’t particularly enjoying his internship, but Max didn’t think it was affecting his academic performance. The Mike she knew was capable of putting aside his own discomfort to focus on his end goal, whether that was setting interdimensional hell tunnels on fire or making the Dean’s List.

El considered her response, sliding open the door to their balcony and gesturing Max to follow her outside. It was a gorgeous, breezy spring evening, warm enough that Max didn't even need the jacket she was wearing. The balcony was home to two pots of dirt, and a tiny shelf of leafy greens that was hanging over the edge.

"School is okay," El said, bending over and unstacking a plastic patio chair, gesturing for Max to sit. "Just busy. And it's really important to Mike that he does well so he can get a good job next year. He keeps saying we can do whatever we want once he gets a job."

From inside the house Max heard the familiar strains of Mario starting up. The boys were playing on Will's Nintendo. El disappeared back into the apartment, returning minutes later holding two glasses of Cola.

"Mike doesn't let me keep soda," El muttered, sitting in the chair next to her and sipping delicately.

"That's because you drink it all," Max scolded. El was an absolute addict. "I'm surprised he let you get it for his birthday."

El gave her a sly grin, and Max couldn't help laughing. "It's another surprise," El said in a smug tone. "Besides, I do the list and Will does the shopping."

The smile on her face was almost mischievous, and Max felt a surge of gratitude for her friend. "Hey," Max blurted out, "I'm glad you're feeling better."

What she wanted to say was, _it's such a relief to see you smiling, and I'm so sorry if I hurt you, even if it was an accident._

El’s smile softened. “Better,” she confirmed. “Sleeping better. Will helps. He’s good at cooking.”

She reached out and took Max’s hand. At first Max had thought that it was strange, the way El constantly sought reassurance through physical contact, but Max had learned in time that it was the best way to ground her. Though she had only heard alarming details - dropped so easily in conversation that Max felt sick when she thought of the implications - about El’s childhood in Hawkins’ Lab, she had gathered that it had been cold and lonely, and without loving touch. If it was anyone else but El, she’d feel weird about holding hands.

“I’m sorry about your birthday. I can’t be a normal person,” El said with such simple resignation that Max’s heart broke.

“Hey.” Max squeezed her hand gently. El’s eyes were starting to take on that faded, far away quality that meant she was disengaging. “Hey, none of us are normal people. That’s why we’re the Party.”

“No,” El said in response. Max wasn’t sure if El was agreeing or disagreeing with her assessment. Either way, her gaze sharpened again, focusing on Max. She gave her a chagrined smile, and Max sensed that any impending crisis had passed.

“Look.” Max turned her hand so she could see El’s nails. “When was the last time you did your nails?” They were bare, and Max didn’t think she’d seen El without some sort of neon color or glitter on her nails since they were freshman in high school. “Go get your kit,” Max ordered. “We’ll do something nice for Mike’s birthday.”

El’s face lit up with a smile and she stood up. “Toes too?” she called as she stepped into the house.

“Of course!” Max shouted back, and then slumped in her chair and scrubbed at her face. She felt like a freshman in high school again, out of her depth and unsure how to be the friend that the girl in front of her deserved.

It hadn’t always been easy with El - they’d become friends by sheer proximity, commiserating at first over their dumb teenage boyfriends while they figured out if they actually had anything in common - but once they’d gotten through the worst of the awkwardness, El had found a friend who could introduce to the rite of passage that was _girl talk_ , and Max had gained a friend who supported her without question or fear, who didn’t care that she wasn’t the most fashionable girl at school or didn’t wear the right tennis shoes. Considering that Max had lost - or never even made - friends because of her stepfather or their lack of money or the fact that she rode her skateboard everywhere, the addition of El Hopper had been a boon to her life .

El returned with the manicure kit, and Max slid to the ground so she could sit in front of her. “What are you thinking?” she asked, crossing her legs and leaning against El’s knees.

“Blue is Mike’s favorite color,” El said immediately, and Max obediently fished out a baby blue with silver sparkles.

“This or the aqua?” Max prompted, and El pointed to the sparkles.

Max got to work, and they fell into a content silence as the evening turned orange, the shadows grew longer, and Dustin and Will shouted at each other Mario. As she ran the curved edge of the manicure tool under El’s nails, Max was surprised at what she found.

“Is - is this motor oil?” she asked, holding the tool up to her face. No mistake about the dried black sludge she’d just scraped from under El’s nails.

El shrugged. “Helping Marco.”

“Helping Marco with what?”

El pointed. In their reserved space in the little parking lot was an ugly burgundy Buick, sitting on blocks. That explained why Will’s car had been parked on the street.

“Do you know how to fix a car?” Max asked, and El shook her head. “Does Marco know how to fix cars?”

Again, El shrugged. “Can’t understand everything he says. He points, I do what he says. Sometimes he shouts, sometimes he swears. It’s fun.”

“Huh.” Max looked out at the car again. She wondered if El’s neighbors had realized how El had been struggling, what a big deal it was for her to come outside and help Marco. “What’s he going to do with it?”

El shrugged a third time, and Max took that to mean that she not only didn’t know, she didn’t particularly care.

Just as Max was finishing up El’s toes, Dustin shouted from inside, “El, Max, pizza is here!”

“Good.” El craned her head back to glance at the clock hanging on their kitchen wall. “Mike should be home any minute.”

Max packed up the manicure kit, to prevent messing up El’s nails, and followed El into the kitchen, where Dustin had stacked three boxes of pizza.

“Three?” Max wrinkled her nose. “There’s only five of us!”

“One supreme, for El,” - El flashed him a grateful smile - “One meat lovers, for you and me, and one extra cheese for Will and Mike, because they're boring.”

Will looked hurt. “The grease upsets my stomach.”

He pulled four plates from the cabinet - two in matching brown and white patterns, and two others in blue and pink - and handed them to Dustin. “El, do we have -”

Before he could finish the question the front door slammed, and El’s face lit up. “Stay here,” she ordered, darting out of the kitchen.

They listened as El greeted Mike, and Mike returned in a clearly surprised tone, “El, hey! Hey, you look great. You didn’t have to get dressed up or anything -”

“I wanted to,” El interrupted, and there was a thump that Max guessed was Mike’s backpack hitting the ground.

There was about five seconds of silence, and then Mike was talking again, voice muffled and gruff, “Today sucked. A doctor yelled at me when I couldn’t get their stupid C-arm fixed fast enough, and no one told me I needed one of those lead gowns until I got zapped a bunch of times, and then I found out that the project that we’ve been working on the last two weeks in lab was supposed to be done in millimeters. So now I have to spend all weekend redoing everything so I can turn it in on Monday. Thank god Professor Milhouse likes me.”

“I’m sorry,” El replied quietly. “It’s your birthday. I wanted it to be happy.”

“I know,” Mike said, and sighed. “I just want to sit on the couch with you. That’ll make me happy. We can even watch Dirty Dancing.”

“Shit,” Will swore under his breath. “Abort! Abort!”

“Abort?” Dustin hissed back. “Abort where? We’re already here!”

“What do you want us to do, jump off the balcony?” Max demanded.

Before Will could answer, Max heard Mike say, “What was that?”

And then he was standing in the doorway.

Silence fell. Max watched as Mike’s face morphed, from exhaustion to confusion. His eyebrows drew down, and his mouth dropped open.

Then his eyes landed on Dustin, and his expression curdled.

“Where’s the booze Dustin?” Mike asked, and even Max, who was regularly the target of Mike’s ire was taken aback at the hostility in his voice.

"Mike!" both El and Will admonished in unison, but Dustin shouldered past them, shoulders set.

"Hey Mike," he said in a gentle, almost cloying tone. "I wanted to come out for your birthday because -"

"I know what you wanted," Mike interrupted. His face had paled, and two splotches of red had developed high on his cheeks. "You wanted to party, because that's all you ever want to do!"

"Mike!" Will tried in vain to divert his attention, and El was tugging at Mike's arm, a stunned look on her face, but Mike couldn't be stopped.

"Look, I know I have forty year old problems, but that doesn't mean that I can just ignore them so you can have a crash pad for a weekend!" Mike snapped, and even Max found herself shrinking away.

There was a strange stuttering in her heart. The anger in Mike's eyes was too similar to that indignant thirteen year old who'd refused to let her join the party - Max couldn't believe that even now, that pissed off teenager still had the ability to reach through the years and cow her. Then, Mike’s misery had been El’s disappearance, the hope that she was alive mingled with the fear that she was dead. Max didn’t understand what was happening with Mike now.

“ _Mike_ , Mike, I know what I said.” Dustin had one hand up and raised hesitantly, as if he was trying to offer it to Mike. Max was impressed at his bravery in the face of Mike’s rage. Max would have flipped him off and told him to find her when he was ready to talk about it.

“Yeah, you know what you said, so you thought you’d come out here and help me _act my age_?” Mike asked this question in a sarcastic tone, raising his hands to make air quotes. “Thought you’d show me how you’re doing it?”

“I - I don’t -” Dustin stuttered, his face turning the color of a ripe tomato. “I don’t know what you mean-”

“You know exactly what I mean!” Mike shouted. The height difference between them - only a couple inches, realistically - seemed much more dramatic with Mike towering over Dustin. “If you don’t want help for your problems, that’s fine! That’s on you! But I’m doing the best I can to work through my shit!”

Dustin seemed at a complete loss for words. Max felt frozen to the spot.

They, as a party, had all known something had happened with Dustin their senior year. After spending months bragging about the big name colleges he was applying to, Dustin had suddenly stopped making plans. Then he’d stopped talking about college all together.

Something had been taken from her friend. She hated to think about what that could be, because Dustin had always been one of the most effortlessly driven people she'd ever met. From the first time he and Lucas had ever approached her, Dustin had been good at thinking critically, reading people, and figuring out how to get what he wanted.

The reason he'd always played the bard had been these abilities - knowing when to push, when to pull back, when to act adorably contrite and when to take a hard line. The teachers had loved him in school, and even if he'd sometimes struggled against typical school bullies - he was a science nerd, after all, and so sincerely kind that people sometimes found him off putting - pretty much everyone acknowledged his talent in the school plays, and very few people had anything cruel to say about him.

It was why she was friends with him in the first place. She had started at Hawkins, and Dustin and Lucas had decided that they should be friends - and when they'd approached her, Dustin had made sure that she knew exactly what she was getting into with the Ghostbusters costumes and the proton packs. What she saw was what she got with the Party.

That Halloween night she'd had no intention of approaching them. She could have ignored them, let them pass, continued to reject their advances - but the same way she had known that El Hopper had needed a friend who was a girl she had felt drawn to them, and she was still glad to this day that she had taken the chance.

(Not to mention Lucas had screamed like a little girl, a revelation she had exploited many times over the years.)

Dustin could be obnoxious - and whatever self-servicing cloud of denial he’d been living within the last couple years hadn’t helped - but Max had never had an ounce of doubt this his friends were one of the most important parts of his life.

Finally, Max’s tongue seemed to become unstuck. “Mike!” she snapped, moving to stand between Dustin and Mike. “I don’t know what happened between you and Dustin before, but this wasn’t -”

Mike’s face shifted, from anger to surprise, like he had just noticed Max for the first time. Then his eyes slid back to Dustin. “How did you drag Max into this, Dustin? How long did it take you to bully Will into agreeing?”

Dustin made a strange choking noise, as if he didn’t quite didn’t have the air to gasp properly.

“Mike,” Will said, almost dazed in his shock, at the same time Max spat out, “He didn’t talk us into anything!”

Mike crossed his arms and glared at them all mutinously, as if daring them to argue with him. For a moment no one spoke and then El said quietly, from behind him, “I told them to come, Mike.”

He stiffened, as if he’d forgotten El was there at all. Turning to face her, Mike murmured, “What?”

“I told them to come,” El repeated, more strongly. “Dustin asked and Will said no, but I said yes. I wanted to see them. I wanted to make you happy for your birthday. You’ve been so worried about school.”

“El…” Mike said, reaching out for her hand. “El, I’m not mad at you.”

She hesitantly took his hand. Her lower lip was trembling, eyes huge and dark and devastated. “I wanted you to have a happy birthday. You’ve been so worried about school,” El repeated, a note of guilt in her tone.

“I’ve been worried about _you_ ,” Mike said fiercely, and for a moment Max’s breath was swept away. Mike and El gazed into each other’s eyes, and Max was again confronted with Mike and El’s effortless intimacy, and the fact that they shared a bond that was rare and nearly impossible to find. She could admit to herself that it was hard not to be jealous as Mike and El stared at one another, having a silent conversation.

“Well,” Mike finally said, not breaking his eye contact with El. “You’re here. Let’s eat pizza I guess.”

Despite the way Mike had relented, it was obvious that he still wasn’t happy even as they retreated to the living room and dug into the pizzas. Will put on Raiders of the Lost Arc, and Mike sat on the floor between El’s knees as she, Max, and Will crowded onto the loveseat. Dustin sat at the other end, near Will, and didn’t say another word the rest of the evening.

When the movie ended, Will asked cautiously, “Want to play Mario?”

“Nah.” Mike stood up and gathered their plates. “I’m tired and I have to fix that entire lab project tomorrow. I’m turning in.”

El stood up as well and made to follow, but Mike held out a hand. She stopped in her tracks. “No, no, you don’t have to come too. Stay with your friends.”

She looked stricken, and Max reached out and pulled her back down onto the loveseat as Mike dumped the dishes in the sink and then disappeared into the bedroom, closing the door firmly behind him.

“He’s not mad at you El,” Will said to her, reaching over to put a hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t look comforted.

“He’s not happy either,” El looked sad as she said it, but Max couldn’t help the snort that escaped.

“Mike’s never happy,” she pointed out. “Remember that campaign when we burnt down the library instead of looking for that rare old book he wanted us to find?”

“Or when Dustin beat his high score at Galaga?” Will added, trying to prompt a smile.

“Or when I beat Dustin’s high score at Galaga the same night?” Max piled on, noticing out of the corner of her eye that Dustin wasn’t engaged at all, staring down at his feet. She wasn’t sure he was even listening.

“How about the way he complained the entire morning you two got married?” Will continued, and Max grinned as she remembered Mike’s complaining about being surprised by the gift of their wedding rings, about Steve’s contribution, about the fact that the rest of the party knew something that he didn’t. “And that was his wedding day!”

The tiniest smile was starting to twitch at the corner of El’s lips. Max pressed her point. “Remember when he asked me to teach him how to skateboard, and then immediately fell on his ass?”

Will scoffed. “He was only mad because he wanted to look cool in front of El.”

“ _Skateboarding is stupid anyway,_ ” Max dropped her voice into a goofy imitation of teenage Mike.

Dustin still said nothing. Max couldn’t blame him. It was easy to reassure El that Mike wouldn’t and couldn’t stay mad at her; no one could give Dustin that same assurance.

“Come on.” Max stood up from the loveseat and reached for their overnight bags. “Dustin, how do you blow this thing up?”

It was short work to get them settled for the night. Will and Dustin crammed in together on the air mattress, while Max curled up on the loveseat. El made sure they all had pillows and blankets, her eyes constantly straying to their closed bedroom door.

Before she went into the bedroom, Max hugged El tightly. “See you tomorrow,” she whispered.

That ended up not happening; she fell into an uncomfortable sleep around midnight, only to be awoken by Dustin at seven in the morning.

“Hey,” he said, hand on Max’s shoulder. He was kneeling next to the loveseat. Behind him, Will was awake too, blinking sleepily at them. “Let’s head out.”

Max looked at the bedroom door. Dustin saw, and shook his head. “No. Don’t bother him. Let’s just go.”

With a heavy heart, Max packed up. Will got up to lock the door behind them - and it was a testament to the display that Mike had put on the night before that he didn’t even try to talk them into saying goodbye. They hit the road, driving east into the blinding morning sun.

She wondered what El said when she woke up, if she was upset that they hadn’t said goodbye. She wondered if Will tried to explain. She wondered if Mike even pretended to act like he cared.

Dustin didn’t say a word the entire drive, dropping her off at her house with a simple, “Thanks, I’ll talk to you.”

Max stood on the porch, watching as the tail lights of his car turned the corner and disappeared, wondering whether or not that was true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Expect an extra week in between chapters - both juxtaposie and I are going on vacation <3


	5. Immune to Your Consultations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Party Rules: the first to draw blood has to shake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, this chapter does include mentions of high schoolers discussing and having sex, if that's an issue for any of you. Nothing graphic.

**Chapter 5: Immune to Your Consultations**

**June 9th - Lucas**

***

**October 7th, 1985**

**Freshman Year**

Her head was pounding, every heartbeat a dull throb between her temples. The ringing bell, signalling it was time for homeroom, had only made things worse, and El rubbed at her eyes tiredly as she hoisted her backpack up and started the long walk down the hall.

She had been so excited to start high school with the rest of the Party, to leave the cabin and spend her days with Mike and her friends, catch up on everything that she had been denied her entire life. In some ways, it had already been everything she had dreamed of - Mike greeted her every morning at her locker, and they held hands when he walked her to class even though some of the older kids snickered. She got to eat lunch with the entire Party, and at least one of them was in each of her classes.

In other ways, it was harder than she’d expected. She had to wake up with an awful alarm now, the girls in her class sometimes made comments about her clothing, and the teachers had little patience for the gaps in El's knowledge. She hadn't realized how much Hopper and Joyce and the Party worked to make things easy for her until she had started working with people who showed her no consideration at all.

Some days were so good that she could almost see the facade she projected - a normal girl who had gone to elementary school like every other kid, who ran around in the summer sun and swam at the local pool and rode her bike like the other kids in Hawkins.

Other days, like today, were a death march, and the only way to get through them was to retreat into the place in her head that had been her refuge when Papa had pushed her and pushed her until she was a crying, bleeding, begging mess.

(She had learned what a _death march_ was in history class, and for some reason the description had made it hard for her to breathe and made her limbs tremble. That had been the first time Mrs. Wright had been impatient with her.)

Papa hadn't cared about the headaches. Papa had once told her that they were a good thing, that her mind and her talents were growing the same as her arms and legs. Papa sometimes made her do twice as much work when she had a headache.

No one did that to her now, but that didn't actually help the pain any - especially when all she wanted to do was close her eyes and pull a blanket over her head and instead she had to take a geometry quiz and smile at people like her vision wasn’t blurry at the edges.

(It would take another year before it occurred to her to ask Hopper if she could stay home from school, and another year after that to realize she didn't even _need_ to ask Hopper - he knew she wouldn't skip class for a stupid reason.)

She was so focused on her trek to homeroom that she wasn’t aware of her surroundings, and thus was entirely surprised when someone grabbed her wrist. El yelped and pulled away, _hard_ , and it took effort to quash down the instinct to push her assailant away with the flip of her wrist. It mostly came down to self preservation - doing so would only intensify the headache.

"Sorry El." It was only Mike. Lucas was standing behind him, holding his textbooks for his first two classes. "I didn't mean to scare you."

"It's okay." Despite the fact that the feeling of suffocation hadn't abated in the slightest, she still reached for his hand. Her head was hurting so badly that he and Lucas were practically swimming in her peripheral vision. He squeezed gently, and the feeling of claustrophobia only intensified as the other students pushed past them to get to homeroom before the second bell rang.

“Hey.” He ducked down so that they were eye level. She recognized the concerned look on his face, the way his eyebrows pulled over his dark eyes. It seemed like she was always the one putting that look on his face, and she hated it. “You okay?”

She shrugged, looking down at her feet, unable to meet his eyes. “Fine. Headache again.”

“Headache?” Mike’s fingers flexed around hers, tightening his grip. “You get headaches?”

The crowd was starting to thin. Behind them, Lucas turned away, calling, “Mike, I’ll see you in homeroom.”

Mike didn’t even acknowledge him. “El?” he pressed. “When did you start getting headaches?”

It was too hard to think of words. She just wanted to go to homeroom and put her head down. Tucking her chin against her chest, El fiddled with the canvas strap to her backpack and mumbled, “Always.”

“Since you were little?” The anxiety was clear in his voice. Dropping to a whisper, he questioned insistently. “Since - since we met? Since Will - last Halloween? Do they happen often?”

Again, she shrugged. Sometimes she went weeks or even months between headaches, but there were other periods in her life where they seemed to spring up without warning once or twice a week. The first time she’d found someone in the Void for Papa she’d cried herself to sleep from the pain. The headache after closing the Gate had been especially awful, and had taken days to fade away completely, getting better and then worse and then better like someone turning the dial on Hopper’s radio.

When she didn’t say anything, his hand fell away. She shifted uncomfortably, temples pulsing, and covered her eyes with one hand. Desperately, she wished yet again that she was home, wrapped up in her bed. Hopper would stop at home during lunch to check on her, and Mike would bring her homework, and she could open her bedroom window and breathe fresh fall air and listen to the quiet sounds of the forest cocooning her instead of her chattering classmates and slamming lockers and -

“El -” Mike said tightly. She felt more than saw him raise his arms, like he was going to grab her by the shoulders and wrap her up into a hug. The hall was almost empty now, and she knew that the second bell was imminent.

Unable to bear his scrutiny any longer, she turned away from him, intent on trying to beat the bell to homeroom, but when she chanced a glance at Mike’s face, she froze. Blinking slowly, she studied his eyes, crinkled at the corners, and the tight frown that was weighing his face down. Finally, she said it.

“You’re mad at me, and I don’t know why.” She’d been able to reach the conclusion, but it would take too much of her mental faculties to suss out why, and she needed every resource to get through the rest of the day.

“I’m not mad!” Mike shot back immediately, but she saw it, the change on his face as he realized he actually _was_ mad, and understood that Mike wasn’t even sure why himself.

El sighed, too tired to argue. Since their reunion the previous December, they had bickered and fought several times - Mike was a stubborn person, and as El had integrated into society she sometimes developed opinions that did not line up with his. The process was torturous, and the resolution a relief, but she would not follow him blindly just because she loved him. She had escaped that by running away from Papa and leaving the lab behind.

“I just -” Mike stumbled over his words. “Don’t you trust me? I want to help.”

The second bell rang then, and the sound was like a drill directly to the center of her brain. She closed her eyes, stumbling away from him. He reached for her, but she darted away before he could touch her. If he touched her, she would collapse right into him and forsake the entire day. Five minutes ago, she’d had no idea that she could feel as bad as she currently did and not want Mike to comfort her.

“You can’t,” El told him scurrying away to class, leaving him in the middle of the hallway.

***

**May 13th, 1987**

**Sophomore Year**

When the lunch bell rang, Max came to meet El at her locker.

“The boys are still being stupid,” she said, taking El’s lunch bag out of her hand and linking arms. “We’re going to eat outside.”

“Oh.” El looked over her shoulder anxiously as Max led her away. “But - Mike - He’ll be worried -”

“I told LoverBoy that I was taking custody of you,” Max insisted. “The boys can figure out lunch arrangements on their own.”

It would be the first time in almost six weeks that she hadn’t eaten lunch with Mike. Ever since she had returned to school from what her teachers kindly referred to as her _time off_ \- as if they hadn’t been just as responsible for spreading rumors about her two week absence as the rest of the student body, thus introducing her to the concept of _diplomacy_ , as explained by Dustin - Mike had been meeting her at her locker every time the bell rang, as if she was going to disappear between classes (which she essentially had, she guiltily reminded herself, remembering that ill fated study hall with Coach Cashel).

Max pushed through the double doors that led outside. There were picnic tables that dotted the grassy walkway that ringed the school. Usually they were packed if the weather was at all tolerable, but it had rained that morning, so the only people outside were a couple determined smokers. Max and El were able to get a table to themselves further away from the doors, where they could talk in private. The bench was wet, but Max merely untied the sweater from around her waist and swiped impatiently at the puddle, gesturing for El to sit.

“I swear to god, those two give the loudest silent treatment I’ve ever heard,” Max grumbled, tearing into her brown paper bag. El looked down at the one in her own hands before setting it aside. Her appetite hadn’t come back completely yet, and she had bigger concerns at the moment.

“Slamming lockers, their books, their backpacks,” Max continued, rolling her eyes. “If one of them asks me to give the other one a message one more time like I’m some kind of _fucking_ _pigeon_ I won’t be responsible for my actions.”

El let her complain for a moment before asking the question that Mike had dodged earlier that morning. “Why aren’t Mike and Lucas talking?”

Max twirled a carrot stick between her fingers, looking at El appraisingly before answering. “Lucas wants to know how far you and Mike have gone.”

“Indianapolis,” El answered immediately. Max’s face went blank in a way that El instantly recognized. Hot shame curled in her stomach. Still so much she didn’t understand, at least not immediately. Max said nothing, and in a small voice, El asked, “Is this a Cosmo question?”

Max nibbled at the end of the carrot. She suddenly looked nervous. Glancing around, as if to make sure no one was listening, Max leaned in close to El and said quietly, “Me and Lucas had sex.”

“You _what_?” El yelped. Max’s face was red, and she was looking down at her lunch. “When?”

They had talked through the progression of their respective relationships, mapping out the milestones together. El and Max had shared everything with each other - advice and embarrassments and fantasies. Guilt mingled with the shame in her heart. She had been so wrapped up in her own misery she had missed a huge event that she and her best friend had discussed endlessly.

The guilt intensified as she thought of how close she and Mike had come to having sex themselves. She couldn’t say how long it would be before they’d be ready to try again - how long it would take before her eyes stopped dropping automatically to the scar on her abdomen every time she took her shirt off, how long before Mike’s eyes would lose that haunted quality as he looked for her in crowds, how long until they could once again touch only with the intention to make each other feel good, and not cling to one another as if the other could fade away at any moment.

Still, El couldn’t help feeling a little jealous at the small smile on Max’s blushing face. “Two weeks ago.”

“Wow.” El bit her lip, then asked, “What was it like?”

“It was good,” Max said quickly, then winced and said, “It was nice. Weird. But good. We haven’t tried again though. I think it kind of freaked Lucas out - and since it’s not like Dustin or Will are close to having sex…”

El suddenly understood what had happened. “He asked Mike.”

“He asked Mike a bunch of times,” Max confirmed. “And you know how Mike gets when he doesn’t want to answer a question - and especially how he gets if you’re involved.”

Max wasn’t afraid to tell El when she thought Mike was being too overbearing, too protective. She’d also heard muttering from both Dustin and Lucas, who weren’t quite bold enough to complain to El’s face about how Mike treated her.

El knew she didn’t need protection. She had destroyed the Demogorgon. She had single handedly closed the Gate. She had almost killed a man in Chicago.

But there was more that she couldn’t protect herself from - gossip, rumors, and the whispers that followed her down the hallway. The Party had always shielded her to the best of their ability, given advice on how to handle the choppy waters of high school hierarchy, but ultimately she trusted Mike’s judgement more than anyone else’s.

If Mike didn’t want to talk to Lucas about this, whether it was because of him or because of her, it was for a good reason. She suspected Max thought the same - her ire was directed only at being put in the middle of the boy’s argument, and not actually at Mike’s position on the matter.

“I wish they wouldn’t fight,” El murmured, chewing on her thumbnail.

Max rolled her eyes. “Give it a few more days. Someone will look at you crosseyed and Mike will forget about Lucas completely.”

El frowned, but before she could say anything Max reached out and grabbed her lunch, opening the bag and handing El her sandwich. “Hey, you’re going to eat right? You can’t skip, you’ll feel sick all afternoon.”

Max watched intently as El bit off the corner of her sandwich. Feeling oddly exposed, she nudged Max with her shoulder. “Tell me everything about it,” she ordered gently.

***

**September 18th, 1987**

**Junior Year**

She had already changed into uniform and was heading to track practice when she saw him for the first time all day, one knee on the ground and rooting through his backpack. Will was standing expectantly behind him, and saw her before Mike did. He raised his eyebrows at her, mouth dropping open, but El set her jaw and stared forward, refusing to acknowledge either one of them.

Not that she thought Mike would care anyway. Three days ago he had picked her up for school like normal, only to find that by lunchtime he was no longer speaking to her. The silent treatment was their typical modus operandi when they were fighting - in fact, it was in their best interest not to speak, as they (and the rest of the Party) had learned that both Mike and El could get nasty when sufficiently provoked.

She’d learned this lesson the hard way after an argument with Mike that had culminated in her shouting that he was a mouth breather, then panicking when he’d stormed away instead of staying to finish the argument. Max had sat her down and helped talk her through the facts:

It was okay to disagree, and even argue if the issue was sufficiently important, but it wasn’t okay to make her friends hurt just because she was angry. It was a hard lesson - in the lab, the only way to channel her anger had been to explode at her helplessness. That was different. Max - and later Mike, when she’d brought it up with him as well - had explained it to her. The people in the lab had never cared if they hurt her in the first place. Mike and Hopper and the Party all cared if she hurt, even when they were mad at her, and she shouldn’t try to hurt them in return.

(“Look, you’re not the only person who has trouble with this,” Max had reassured her when, anguished and guilt-ridden, El had turned teary. “Why do you think the Party has rules about how to make up when they fight?”)

So it wasn’t the silent treatment itself that was upsetting. She had dealt with the silent treatment before, and knew how to handle it.

The problem was that she had absolutely no idea what had caused it. They hadn’t argued that morning. When they had split for homeroom he’d kissed her and promised he’d see her at lunch. She hadn’t even seen him between homeroom and lunch, and yet somehow had earned silent treatment.

And so, confused and growing angrier by the hour, El had given Mike exactly what he wanted, and thus had not spoken to him in three days.

She strode past them, fully intent on ignoring both Mike and Will and exorcising every last ounce of irritation at the track. Neither boy said anything when she passed. Will looked nervous, mouth pursed, gaze switching between her and Mike. She could feel Mike’s gaze following her down the hall.

Just as she reached the door, he called out, “So are you just going to never speak to me again?”

El stopped short. She looked at her reflection in the door’s glass, hand resting on the cool metal of the handle, processing what she’d just heard.

Then she spun around on her heel and marched down the hallway towards him. Mike’s shoulders were square, his eyes blazing. She never understood how he managed to make himself seem taller at moments like this, when she had to tilt her head back to glare at her properly.

She stopped in front of him, toe to toe, arms crossed tightly across her chest. “I don’t know,” she said icily, poking him in the chest. “Why should I when _you_ are not speaking to _me_.”

There was a moment of silence. Mike’s mouth dropped open, and his cheeks flooded with color.

“I’m gonna wait outside,” Will announced, and without breaking eye contact both El and Mike droned, “Bye Will.”

Mike frowned down at her. “I thought you weren’t speaking to me.”

“I thought _you_ weren’t speaking to _me_!” Her confusion was nearly overwhelmed by her relief. She had no idea what had happened, but they weren’t fighting.

“Oh.” Mike was fidgeting, rocking up onto his toes, hands clenched at his sides. “Well, I’m not mad.”

“Me neither.” They lapsed into silence, pondering the last three days.

“Can I pick you up from track after I take Will home?” Mike asked hopefully, and El beamed in response. She cupped his cheek with one hand and pulled him down to her level, kissing him thoroughly. It had been three whole days after all.

“It’s a date,” she promised, and left him at his locker, jaw hanging.

***

**April 19th, 1988**

**Junior Year**

On Thursday, the storm that had been gathering overhead broke.

El saw it coming from homeroom as Max's face flushed and her frown deepened over the course of the morning - especially when they went to English class, and Will wasn't there. Her stomach roiled - Max was brash and loud and impatient, but when she was truly upset about something, her distress was enough to make El feel ill.

She and Max were walking back to her locker when they spotted Will, obviously fresh from the auditorium judging by the blue paint ringing his wrists because he’d only washed his hands and not down his arms. He was walking a step behind Julie, as if she were his personal bodyguard and he could hide behind her.

Max stiffened next to her, and it was like slow motion - El watched as her mouth dropped open, shoulders squaring as Will looked over and made eye contact and realized he was screwed.

“BYERS!” Max bellowed, dropping her backpack and elbowing away the people in between them to get to Will, who, to his credit, was standing bravely, preparing to take Max’s ire head on. “ _Where_ the _hell_ were you?”

Will’s eyes darted around, as if searching for an opening to run away. “I - Well - The dress rehearsal -”

“You were hiding in the auditorium again!” Max shouted, gesturing to the paint on his arms. “God, did you at least finish your part?”

Will’s eyes grew large as he mouthed for words, and El felt her heart sink. Max and Will had been paired together on an English paper, and Max’s patience with Will was growing thin. They knew that Will, despite being smarter than most of the kids in their grade, generally just did enough work to pass his classes - and even then, El knew, it was to make sure he wasn’t separated from the Party by being left behind a grade, or forced to complete summer school.

El had long known that Will’s attitude about school wasn’t really a good thing, but nobody had ever explained to her why, exactly, he was allowed to get away with it. Even Mike and Hopper, who were incredibly patient and loving when it came to her shortcomings and struggles, were not afraid to call her a brat if she was acting like one, and no one seemed to want to ask why Will was content to hide so deeply within himself.

Max could certainly get angry with him, however. “You didn’t do it, did you?” Her voice was rising dangerously. El bit her lip as more people were noticing them, stopping to watch Max as her hands clenched like she wanted to wrap them around Will’s neck. “Will! Why didn’t you do it?”

“I just - needed more time -” Will fumbled. It was strange, El was not used to seeing Will quite so disturbed - he faced each day with a sort of unshakable resignation. That, El did understand - after facing the Upside Down, the minutiae of high school failed to stir their emotions the same as some of their more dramatic classmates. “I - was -”

“You what?” Max snapped. “You were busy? Busy ignoring all your _other_ homework?”

“The dress rehearsal is -”

“I don’t give a shit about your stupid dress rehearsal!” Max’s voice was shrill. “Oh my god Byers, I made it as easy as possible for you too, all I wanted was the intro and conclusion, I did all of the research myself! You couldn’t even do the easiest part of the goddamn paper!”

“God, Will!” Max barreled on. El met Julie’s eyes and saw that she was completely bewildered. For a moment, El felt bad for her, trapped between Will and Max’s temper. “I’m only here half a day and I have real shit to do, and do I use that as an excuse? No! God, I even tried to make it easy for you and you couldn’t even do that, I’m so stupid!”

“Max, please!” Will finally got a word in edgewise. His face was flushed, and El could see he was deeply embarrassed by the crowd that had gathered. Once Max came back to herself, El knew, she would be embarrassed as well. “It’ll be fine, I’ll finish it tonight, I promise -”

“It was due _today_! I had to beg Carpenter for an extension, and I made excuses for you so you wouldn’t just fail it because I thought you’d have a reason for missing class today!” Max threw her hands up. “I can’t believe you were just screwing around in the auditorium again.”

“Tonight,” Will was promising, trying to get Max to make eye contact with him. “Tonight, I’ll finish, I swear -”

“Forget it! I’ll finish it myself!” Max snapped. She bent over and picked up her backpack. “You’re welcome for the B asshole.”

***

**October 14th, 1988**

**Senior Year**

The steering wheel of the station wagon was digging into her lower back, but it was a discomfort that El was long accustomed to ignoring - particularly now, with Mike’s lips on her neck and his warm hands inching up her thighs, fingertips under the hem of her skirt. The sensation sent the most delicious thrill down her spine, and she couldn’t help moaning as her head tilted back, hands tangled in Mike’s hair to push it off of his forehead.

It was a cool, crisp Friday night in October, she and Mike were alone in the station wagon, and neither one was expected home anytime soon. The Hawkins Tigers had won their football game earlier in the evening, which meant that the game had actually been fun - El didn’t care about football, but she cared when her friends on the cheerleading team were in a good mood and the crowd responded to their dancing and cheering. It was on nights like these that El actually felt like the normal girl she still fantasized about.

After the game she’d found Lucas and Max hanging with other members of the baseball team. They’d told her that Dustin and Kelly were around somewhere with Mike, but hadn’t seen them since halftime. She never did get to say hi to Dustin and Kelly - she’d been ushered into the locker room with the rest of the team, and when she’d come out - not bothering to throw on her warm up sweats - Mike was standing outside, key ring swinging around his index finger.

Her breath caught in her throat at the smile he gave her. His eyes were dark and hungry, and goosebumps rose as he reached for her bag and took her hand, leading her to the station wagon. This was her favorite time during the week, after football games, sweaty and exhilarated, when she and Mike could be alone to do whatever they wanted - which usually was some variant of touching, kissing, and basking in the other’s presence.

Which was exactly what they were doing when El saw the book in the backseat. They were parked in their favorite spot - the driveway of an abandoned house, the overgrown lawn and brush providing the illusion of privacy - and the windows were fogged over from their combined body heat. Her top had been discarded, but she was still wearing her uniform skirt, fanned across her thighs as she straddled Mike’s hips.

He was sucking a hickey into the soft skin below her ear, and as she rolled her head to give him better access she caught a flash of the crinkled spine of _Dune_ sitting in the backseat, face down to save his place.

“Did you -” She braced her hands on his shoulders and leaned away from him. The look on his face was dazed - he had no idea why she’d stopped. “Did you leave at halftime again?”

He mouthed for an answer, and in that instant, El knew. “You did! You left again, even though I asked you not to!”

Mike groaned, slumping his shoulders and throwing his head back. “I saw the halftime routine!”

It wasn’t the first time they’d argued about this. Soon after the football season had started, El had learned that Mike was watching until halftime, and then going back to his car to read or work on homework until the game was over and he could pick her up.

She couldn’t say why it bothered her so much. Maybe because cheerleading had been her own idea, something she’d tried completely on her own despite being embarrassed when Mike and Max hadn’t been totally enthused by the idea. It had been Dustin and Lucas who had overheard and seen El’s mortification and provided the necessary encouragement - and she was still so grateful because cheerleading was exactly as much fun as she’d hoped it would be, without any of the popular girls bullying her like Mike had been afraid.

(Once she made the squad, Mike’s opinion had changed quickly - she’d forever cherish the memory of his face the first time she had come to school on game day in uniform.)

“Lucas and Max stayed the whole game!” she protested, and Mike grunted in frustration.

“Lucas and Max are friends with some of those guys,” he argued. “And you know I _hate_ football.”

And she hated that argument. No one else on the cheerleading squad had a boyfriend who left at halftime because he couldn’t bear to sit through another hour of football. There was no doubt that Mike was happy for her and supported her - he hadn’t missed a single game all season, home or away - but she had thought that he’d listened to her when she’d asked him to wait for the end of the game.

Mike exhaled hard when she rolled off of him, flinging herself back into the passenger seat and reaching for her top. He gaped at her while she pulled it over her head.

“So…” His eyebrows were drawn low, like he was stunned at how quickly his fortunes had turned in the last minute. “Are we not having sex?”

El glared at him, arms crossed. “You know we do cheers in the second half!”

He slammed his palm into the steering wheel. “El, you _know_ I hate football!”

“Take me home!” she snapped, for some reason so horribly disappointed that she didn’t even want to see his face.

He fumbled with the keys. “Fine!”

“Good!”

They spent the ensuing ride in silence.

(For the rest of the season, Mike simply brought the book into the stadium with him, but it would be years until Will accidentally let it slip. She wouldn’t speak to Mike for a full night, still angry on behalf of her eighteen year old self.)

***

**1992**

**Present Day**

The house he was working at was right down the street, so Mike came home for lunch, sweaty and with the slight beginnings of a sunburn on the tip of his nose and the curve of his shoulders.

El heard him trudging up the steps as she was plating his lunch, and with a twitch of her nose had the door unlocked before he even hit the second story landing. As he crossed the threshold into the kitchen she handed him a glass of lemonade and held up a plate with a sandwich and potato salad. “Hungry?”

Mike’s face broke into a predatory grin. “Yeah,” he said, wrapping both of his long arms around her while she shrieked and tried to wiggle away - mostly for show, because even though he was gross and smelly she had a special fondness for this version of Mike. Fresh from his summer job at a local landscaping company, he reminded her of summers in Hawkins, riding behind him on his bike, holding hands as they walked down the baking concrete to the ice cream shop, or sunning at the quarry.

“Mike!” she exclaimed when he stuck his nose into her neck. Her fingers threaded into the hair soaking and clinging to his neck at the base of his skull. His grip on her only tightened and when he threatened to lift her off her feet she carefully floated the plate back to the counter, using both of her hands to clutch at him and keep her balance. “When do you have to be back?”

“Ugh,” Mike groaned, his breath a hot puff against her collarbone. “Too soon. Twenty minutes, and then I have to leave so we can mow the park over on Locust Street.”

“Eat,” El said sternly, pointing to the sandwich on the table. Her toes were brushing his shins. “It’s too hot. You’ll get sick.”

With a sigh he let her go and sat down at the table, obliterating almost half the sandwich with a single bite. “How’s your day?” he asked around a mouthful of salami and swiss. She wrinkled her nose at him talking with his mouth full.

“Anna made pizzelles,” El said, pointing to the foil wrapped package on the table. “And Lucas called.”

Mike’s eyebrows rose, and he put down the bite that remained of his sandwich. “Is everything okay?” he asked, and El hated the way that he immediately assumed something was wrong even if she couldn’t blame him. They were poor college students, so it had to be a big deal to justify the long distance phone call.

“Everything is fine,” El said. She opened the foil, revealing the delicately imprinted cookies that her neighbor had given her. The sharp smell of anise hit her. “His birthday is next Tuesday. They’re having a big party in Chicago that weekend. He wants us to come.”

Mike made an impatient noise and shoved the rest of his sandwich in his mouth. “Aren’t we done with this birthday bullshit yet?”

El shrugged. They had never really talked about what had happened on his birthday. Max and Dustin had been gone the next morning, and after a tense breakfast Mike had left and spent the entire day in the school library. Her and Will had cleaned up and spent the day in nervous anticipation, unsure what to expect when Mike returned home.

He’d been in better spirits that evening, and the closest they had come to talking about anything had been when El asked if he wanted to cut his cake. Mike had asked where it came from, and El explained that his mother had made it and that Dustin had brought it out. There had been the smallest flicker of guilt on his face, though it had been easily chased away by Karen Wheeler’s chocolate cherry cake.

Mike picked up a fork and stabbed at the potato salad. “Do you want to go?”

She bit into a pizzelle and considered her answer. Mike always asked her opinion and factored her wellbeing into decisions that he made - and more than that, he tried to ensure that they made decisions together, as a couple. All the same, she hadn’t been expecting his question. After his birthday had gone so poorly, she had expected him to launch into an animated rant about how stupid it was to make such a big deal out of someone’s twenty first birthday, about how short sighted it was to view it as a milestone, and how there were better markers of maturity.

But he had asked what she thought, and so, like always when Mike asked her a question, she thought about her most honest answer. She didn’t have to remind herself that _friends don’t lie_ anymore, not when it came to Mike. There was nobody who took her opinions and wants and needs more seriously.

The truth was El wanted to go.

She loved their life in Terre Haute. She loved their apartment, she loved their neighbors, and she loved her job. She liked every friend Mike had brought home from school, and the ones that she had met when she’d visited him at the library or walked with him around campus. She was so proud of him and every single one of his accomplishments over the three years he’d gone to Indiana State.

But that didn’t change the fact that she had gone through a terrible, awful winter. She’d endured a depressive episode (that phrase had been in Will’s papers, along with _anniversary effect_ ) that had taken months before she felt even remotely normal again. Coming back to herself had felt like waking up after a long, restless sleep, and El wanted safe, familiar things - and people - around her. Which meant their sweet downstairs neighbors, her grumpy, loving cat, Hopper, and the Party.

She practically craved her friends - the first friends she’d ever made, the first people who’d ever listened to her, protected her, kept her safe and made her laugh. The time Will spent with them over the spring semester had been a bittersweet reminder of her high school happiness, and how far away that all seemed now.

While she would never have anything but pride in the life she and Mike had built out in Terre Haute, at the moment she felt emotionally fragile in a way that made her nostalgic for rides in the station wagon, Saturday campaigns, and cheerleading Friday nights.

She wanted the Party folded around her, a shield against every bad thing that had ever hunted her in real life or in her nightmares.

Mike was patient while she thought about her answer. Finally, she cleared her throat and said, “Lucas invited us. He wants us to be there.”

“Lucas has invited us to Chicago before,” Mike pointed out. “He won’t be upset if we don’t go.”

“No,” El said sternly, because she could tell he hadn’t understood what she was saying. “He invited us to Chicago before. This time he invited us to his party.”

It was true that Lucas had extended an open invitation to visit him in Chicago, but this was different. This time he’d called El and asked her and Mike to come out specifically for his birthday party. It was one thing to tell them to come out whenever they wanted, and another for him to say that he wanted to see them for his birthday.

Mike nodded, and she knew her point had been made. He licked his lips and thought about it.

“We could take the car,” El pointed out. “Save money on bus tickets.”

Mike winced. “You think that car will make it to Chicago and back? I don’t want to get stranded somewhere.”

The car in question was an old Buick that their neighbor Marco had gotten from his son-in-law’s garage - he’d had it towed to their house, dragged El outside, made her help fix it up, and then handed her the keys as if it hadn’t meant the world to her and Mike. It had four mismatched tires, and the back bumper was a different color than the rest of the car, but next winter Mike wouldn’t have to walk to school on the coldest mornings, and El didn’t have to carry groceries on the bus anymore, and she was grateful for it.

Mike was slightly more hesitant. He appreciated the gesture, she knew, but he hadn’t seen what had gone into fixing it up, and didn’t trust the car as implicitly as El did.

El rolled her eyes. “The car will be fine.”

“Is Will going?” El noticed he hadn’t asked about Max and Dustin. She didn’t comment on it. The memory of Mike’s half-hearted reassurances that he wasn’t mad at her on his birthday were still fresh in her mind.

“I think so, but I haven’t talked to him.” Will had returned to Hawkins the week after Mike’s finals, as soon as the semester had ended and Mike could start his summer job. While El missed his company and his easy going presence in the apartment, it had been a relief to realize she was capable of taking care of the household again.

El had lived for years knowing that she wasn’t like other people - hadn’t been raised like them, hadn’t been given the same chances other kids had, didn’t process emotions or even pain the same way normal people did. Even her marriage to Mike, hastily committed at the courthouse at the tender age of eighteen, was another thing that marked her as different. It wasn’t unheard of, but it was _weird_ , as El had quickly learned when Mike had started college and they’d met more people their own age.

She could live with that knowledge, but sometimes it was too much for her to bear. Max’s birthday, the shots of tequila, and the resulting flashbacks -

\- _Hands grabbing at her arms, tossing her head to push them away, no don’t please don’t leave her in the dark again please no and then more hands, more than she could shove away with a flick of her wrist and then the sharp, searing pain of a needle in her neck or shoulder or leg, wherever they found the first opening waves of dizziness creeping up on her as her heart pounded in her chest, the world blurring and everything going numb_ -

\- had been an unwelcome and overwhelming reminder that she couldn’t have normal things. She could only be weird.

It was pure bad luck that Max’s birthday fell right before November, the time of year when she was more likely to have random flashbacks, sleepless nights and hyper realistic nightmares.

Mike got up, wiped his hands on his jeans, and came over to the counter. He put his hands on her arms and looked at her closely. “Lucas lives in a frat house,” he said. “Frats are filled with guys our age, and they party. There’s going to be a lot of alcohol, and probably a lot of guys acting like idiots. Are you sure you’ll be okay if we go?”

“I won’t drink,” El said quickly. “And I don’t care if other people drink. I want to see our friends.”

He considered this, bit his lip, thumbs rubbing gentle circles on her arm.

“Okay,” he finally said. “Let’s go.”

***

Mike had insisted on working the morning before their departure, and then there was an accident on I-94 on the way into Chicago, so he was in a foul mood by the time they finally found parking and started the hike to Lucas’ house. Feeling responsible, El stayed quiet and let him stew.

His temper was not improved by Lucas and Will pulling them into Lucas’s bedroom with Max and Dustin. El knew immediately what was happening before Will even opened his mouth. Her stomach dropped.

“Rule of law,” Will declared. “You two have to shake.”

Silence.

“And just who is supposed to shake first?” Mike asked, a strange look on his face. It made El nervous. He wasn’t making eye contact with any of them, his gaze having landed somewhere in the area of Will’s navel.

"That's ultimately up to you two," Max said, arms crossed. El looked at her anxiously. "But I know we all have opinions about who drew first blood."

"Yeah?" Mike asked. The challenge in his voice was undeniable. El bit her lip nervously. Mike looked around, studying each of their faces in turn. "Do you? Lucas? Max?"

"No," Will cut in, before either one could respond. "No, we're not fighting about this. It's Lucas's birthday and we're all here to have fun, so you and Dustin have to work this out."

El looked between Mike and Will. She didn't like the look on Mike's face, which was somewhere between furious and disbelieving. He was standing rigid, shoulders squared, his eyes hard as he looked at Dustin. El felt a pit forming in her stomach.

It wasn't hard to provoke Mike's anger. He was usually the one to have big ideas, or figure out how to make something work, and he had a distinct intolerance for anyone or anything that stood in his way. One of her favorite things about him had always been how he'd applied those values to his friends: El needed to talk to Will in the Upside Down? Figure out how to build a bath! Demodogs in El's way at Hawkin's lab? Distract the hive mind!

Even when he planned their Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, he always did so with specific characters in mind, trying to engage Max in the game, or encourage some of Dustin's more ridiculous ideas. It was one of her favorite things about Mike - even when things didn’t go the way he planned and he got upset and frustrated.

This was something different than Mike’s usual temper tantrum. She could see it on his face, the way he held himself, the dangerous tone to his voice. Could the others see it too? Or had they been living apart from Mike for so long that they were dismissing it?

Mike looked at Dustin, whose face was red.

“I didn’t just show up at your place to party.” Dustin said. “I felt bad, you know? About Will’s birthday. I wanted to shake.”

He held up one hand hopefully. El saw out of the corner of her eye, but she wasn’t looking at Dustin. She was looking at Mike’s fist, clenched at his side. She wasn’t sure what, exactly, about Dustin’s contrite position was upsetting him the most, or whether it was being ordered to shake when he was already in a foul mood, but El had a feeling that he was more likely to sock Dustin in the face than to shake hands with him.

The tension in the room ratcheted unbearably - Mike, standing motionless, facing Dustin, who hadn’t moved his hand. The rest of the party, watching with something like resignation. Time slowed down. El blinked, and in that split second saw them from above, standing in Lucas’s tiny bedroom, their connections to one another tenuous and trembling.

She had to stop Mike before he did something irrevocable to destroy those bonds permanently.

So she stepped in front of Mike, lifted her hand, and grasped Dustin’s, shaking it firmly.

Dustin's face morphed from apologetic to confused. He started to pull away, but El tightened her grip on his hand. He looked over her shoulder at Mike, expression nervous.

"What are you doing?" he hissed, but El didn’t waver.

"It's my fault you're fighting. I invited you for Mike's birthday. I was sad at Will's birthday. I ruined Max's birthday. I drew first blood." El let go of Dustin's hand. He looked stunned. His expression mirrored the rest of the party - Will, Max, and Lucas, all staring at her, eyes wide. Will's mouth had even dropped open a little bit.

Then she turned back to Mike, and his face almost broke her heart.

"Can I talk to you please?" he ground out between clenched teeth, reaching for her hand. While Mike's grip was gentle - he'd never, _ever_ grabbed her out of anger, never invoked the horrible memories of Hawkins Lab - there was no question he was leading her, and he pulled her out of the room, out of the house, into the muggy June air.

The second they were outside she pulled her hand out of his, but Mike didn't stop walking - too many people around - and she realized belatedly that he was walking back to their car. The tension mounted as, by silent agreement, Mike unlocked the doors to the Buick and they both slid inside.

For a moment there was silence, and then El asked, "What the hell, Mike?" at the same moment Mike burst out, "You shouldn't have done that!"

"Why not?" she asked. "You're mad at Dustin because of me. Party rules."

"It's _not_ because of you,” Mike insisted, open hand slapping against his thigh. "Dustin's had his head up his ass for the last year. Longer than that! Since we graduated high school. You know how smart he is! And he's wasting his time dicking around with those assholes back in Hawkins."

"So what?" El challenged. "He's still a member of the party. Rule of law."

"So I don't have time for this shit when he doesn't want help and we're already struggling!" Mike exploded.

"This wasn't about helping him," El pointed out. Mike had never been good at making that distinction; since the earliest days of their relationship they'd had discussions and sometimes arguments about his instinctual need to step in and take control of a situation, give help even if it wasn't needed. "He came out to Terre Haute to apologize. You were rude. You yelled at him."

"Because he shouldn't have come out!" Mike's face was bright red - he hadn't put the key in the ignition to turn the fans on, and they were quickly baking in the car. His hands were gripping the steering wheel as if he was choking some invisible victim. "He knew it wasn't a good idea to come out! That's why he made his smartass remark at Will's party!"

" _I'm_ the one who told him to come out," El said firmly. Her stomach was churning. She absolutely hated fighting with Mike, but she wouldn't back down when she thought he was wrong either. "I'm the reason you were sad at Will's. So you should be mad at me. That's why I shook his hand. First blood."

"I can't be mad at you," Mike said in a strange, flat tone. He went still, hands dropping back into his lap.

"Why not?" El asked, arms crossed, heart pounding.

"You're my wife," Mike said in that same soft voice, curiously devoid of any emotion.

El frowned. It wasn't like they had never fought before. It wasn't even the first time they had fought as a married couple. They were both stubborn people with deeply held convictions. "Mike."

Mike threw his hands up. "How can I be mad at you? You barely got out of bed for like, four months! I've just spent this entire semester running around trying to take care of you! I can't turn that around on you, what does that say about me?"

El's heart sank. She knew the winter had been as hard on him as it had on her. While she'd struggled with herself, Mike had struggled with the real world. The only reason they'd kept afloat had been Will's help.

This had happened when they were sixteen as well. For a period of time after she had returned to school, he'd treated her like she was made of glass, something fragile, like he was afraid anything could break her again.

She thought about what to say, how to tell him that she could withstand his honest feelings.

"If you're mad at me, be mad at me,” she said finally.

"I'm not mad at you!" Mike shouted.

"You sound like it!" she yelled back.

"I'm mad at Dustin!" he insisted. "He knew I didn't want anyone to come out! The least you can do is support me! I supported you!"

Tears pricked at her eyes. She took in a deep breath, clenched her fists, feeling her nails digging into her palms. The pain in her hands took the edge off of the pain in her chest. She exhaled, trying to calm her stuttering heart, and reached for the door handle.

"You want to stay here and be mad,” she ordered, not caring that she was jumbling her words as she opened the door and stepped back out onto the curb. "I want to see our friends.”

The car was so hot that stepping back into the summer afternoon felt like a breath of fresh air - or maybe that was just the relief she felt at getting away from Mike, to think with a clear head again. There was nothing she hated more than fighting with him, except for when they fought so intensely that she needed space.

It was a long running joke that if you had to tell Mike bad news, tell El first - he had more patience for her, listened to her more closely, considered her opinion with much more weight than anyone else on the planet. She was good at smothering his fiery temper before it was out of control, and when she couldn't, she knew that he wouldn't calm down until he decided he _wanted_ to be calm again.

When she was this frustrated with him, there was nothing she could do but walk away until they were both calm and thinking rationally again. He was being stubborn, and it wasn't fair to Dustin, who was doing everything in his power to try and repair their friendship.

She made it about ten steps before she heard the car door slam, and then Mike hurtled past her, hands jammed into his jeans pockets. His legs were so much longer than hers it was practically nothing for him to outpace her, and by the time she reached the frat house he had disappeared into its depths.

Since she didn't particularly want to see him, she didn't try to search for him. Instead she wound her way through the party, looking for Max or Will or Dustin or Lucas. The house was packed - it didn't appear that many members of the fraternity went home for summer, choosing instead to stay at the house, and they - along with many of their friends and significant others - were all there to celebrate Lucas's birthday.

After a few confused minutes wandering around and not seeing anybody she recognized - not even Mike, although she still didn't particularly want to see his face - she finally spotted Max's red hair at the far end of the kitchen, near the door that led to the patio. El caught up to her, snagging her elbow right before Max ducked outside.

Her face brightened when she saw El, and then darkened as she took in El's expression. Looking into her eyes, she said flatly, "It didn't go well?"

El shook her head, and Max reached for her hand, pulling her outside. "Come on."

She was cradling two bottles of beer, one of which she handed to Dustin when they broke through the crowd to find him and Will standing at the edge of the patio.

Dustin gave her an apprehensive look. "El..."

She pushed past Max to throw her arms around Dustin's waist. He was soft and sweaty in the summer heat. He hugged her close, bending to press his cheek against the crown of her head. "I'm sorry. You shouldn’t have done that. You just made him mad."

"He was already mad,” she murmured. "He wants to be mad at you, but he's not mad at you."

El pulled away, but Dustin kept an arm around her shoulders. She didn’t mind. It was exactly what she had been looking for when she’d told Mike she wanted to go to Chicago.

"So where is he?" Will asked nervously.

"I don’t know,” El replied irritably, and frowned when Will's eyebrows rose. "He left me. He's in the house."

Will just looked at her, mild surprise on his face. Max and Dustin were also silent.

“What?” El snapped, feeling nettled.

Will squinted his eyes, looking carefully at her face. “Nothing,” he finally said, looking away and down at his cup. “I’m going to get more water.”

El’s instinct was to call out, try to convince him to stay, maybe even apologize (though she didn't know what for), but then he was lost in the sea of people crowding the house. She watched the space he had just been a moment before, and then Dustin squeezed her shoulder.

“Oh my god El, I just realized we can do something I have wanted to do for _ever_!” he exclaimed, and El looked up at him. His eyes were sparkling with in a way that she hadn’t seen in years, and she couldn’t help feeling excited in turn.

“What?” she asked, unable to resist the smile growing across her face.

“There’s a huge beer pong table in there. We should go in and use your powers to kick some frat boy ass.” El blanched, and Dustin rushed to clarify, “You don’t have to drink! I’ll drink for you. I just want to watch their faces when you make all the impossible shots.”

“Dustin.” Max’s tone was scolding, and El knew what she was going to say before she said it. “What have we told you about making her do tricks?”

It was a common refrain from high school - Dustin always had big ideas, whether it was science experiments or pranks, and his ideas usually involved El’s powers. Mike and Max usually reigned him in before the ideas could grow out of control, but El had never been as offended as they had been on her behalf. She’d never been able to explain that she had been raised as a weapon in the Cold War, treated as nothing more than an object, her only value in what she could do with her mind, and that to have someone find the positive part of her abilities, find enthusiasm for what she often considered the worst part of her, embrace it rather than shy away from it, was important and made her feel comforted, and normal.

She knew Mike and Max were trying to protect her, but sometimes it was a forceful reminder that she wasn't normal and would never be normal. Dustin just accepted her powers as part of who she was, and sometimes that was exactly what she needed.

"Or," Max leaned in, head tilting, “we could join the Duck Hunter tournament that Alicia is organizing."

"That's it," Dustin said, changing tracks instantly. "That's the one. Max is right. We should do that."

El gave him a twisted smile. Playing video games with Dustin was one of her favorite things to do in high school - both for his enthusiasm, and the fact that he loved to play with her.

They'd done a lot of horrendous, terrible things to her in the lab - things that she was still understanding the magnitude of how they impacted her life - but one of the strange, unexpected side effects of the mind games they constantly made her play was that she was abnormally good at video games. Depending on how much interest she had in a game, only Dustin and Max could really compete against her, and even then it was hard once her focus narrowed and she couldn’t be distracted.

Dustin loved it. He never got mad when El beat him, and relished the challenge of trying to topple her high scores.

Alicia looked surprised when they appeared, but graciously handed over the controller.

"Where's Lucas?" Max asked as the dancing dog taunted her from the screen.

"He's manning beer pong." Alicia rolled her eyes. "Apparently the honor of somebody's kingdom is at stake, the way they're all talking. I hate when he takes it seriously like that."

Max barked a laugh. "He is so competitive, isn't he?"

"You're not really one to talk, Max," Dustin pointed out, standing behind El.

It only took a few shots before El zoned out - focused entirely on that dumb dog and the ducks flying out of the pixelated brush. She and Dustin went back and forth for a few minutes, and then the controller was passed off to one of Lucas's friends from the fraternity. El didn't even catch his name.

Alicia broke her reverie, letting out a long, low whistle. "You might be better than me at this."

"My dad's chief of police," El replied absently, feeling more than seeing the way Dustin and Max had tensed at the observation. It was true Hopper had taught her how to shoot, but he was not the father figure who had trained her to focus so obediently.

She was so wrapped up in the game - and the numb, empty feeling that kept her from thinking about her husband and how upset she was with him - that she didn't notice when Lucas approached.

He knew better than to take her by surprise - the long forgiven memory of being thrown across the junkyard had driven that painful lesson home - and as a result she had no idea how long he stood there calling her name while she shot down animated ducks.

It took her a moment to reorient to the real world, and she swayed a bit on her feet - Lucas steadied her with one hand, looking at her with a concerned expression. She brushed him off, and turned back to the video game.

"El," Lucas said, urgency in his voice. "Mike's drunk."

"So?" She didn't take her eyes off the screen.

"So he told Will to fuck off,” Lucas reported.

El sighed and turned away from the television, shoving the controller into Max's hands. "Where is he?"

He led her away from the living room, into the depths of the kitchen where the beer pong table had been set up. The kitchen was packed with people who, thankfully, seemed to be more concerned about setting up the wrecked table for a new game instead of gawking at her husband and Will, who were fighting over a bottle at the counter.

"You're going to be sick," Will was saying.

Mike was holding the bottle over his head. "I don't care, _I don't care_."

El stepped forward, catching his attention. "Mike."

He looked at her, and her heart broke at what she saw. There was anger, sure, but there was also distress - and fear. Jaw set, he maintained eye contact with her, wrenching the lid off and lifting the bottle to his lips.

"No,” she said flatly, before he could tip the bottle back. He glared at her but acquiesced, lowering his arm. Reaching to take it from his hands, she turned to Lucas. "Where can we go?"

"Honestly?" Lucas eyed her pouting husband. "Your best bet is to take him down to the freshman couch in the basement."

"The what?" El asked, just as Will asked, "Why do you call it that?"

"Because that's where we make the freshman sleep when they drink too much,” Lucas answered. "And Mike has definitely had too much to drink. There's a barf bucket and clean towels."

Will looked vaguely disgusted, though El wasn't sure why. She reached for Mike's hand, handing the bottle to Will and beckoning for Mike to follow as Lucas guided her to a door in the corner of the kitchen.

The basement, El was relieved to find, was significantly cooler, darker, and quieter than upstairs. The noise from the raucous party upstairs carried, so it wasn’t like they’d get any peace or silence but El thought it was a good place for Mike to cool off.

The freshman couch was a lumpy brown piece with several mysterious stains. It didn’t smell off, but El still wrinkled her nose as Mike flopped face down onto it, pulling a pillow over his head.

"Mike." El cautiously sat on the edge of the couch. On the floor behind the arm of the couch was a metal pail, with the words BARF BUCKET scrawled across in black permanent marker. "Do you want to tell me why you're mad?"

"No." Mike's reply was muffled by the pillow.

A sinking feeling was crawling through her gut. If Mike was mad at her, what could she do? It had been a hard winter, and made worse because she hadn't been able to muster the energy to manage the house or even help support him while he ran around between school and his internship.

He had sacrificed so much to take care of her. She had long lived with the knowledge that she probably wasn't worth such effort, that his life would have been easier without her, but he had never expressed these ideas himself or given her a reason to doubt him.

Had it happened? Had the resentment built and built until he couldn't take it anymore? Was it finally too much to ask of him? _Juggle your sick wife, demanding internship, and still graduate on time. Oh, and stay sane while doing it._

"Mike,” she said again. It was a fight to get his name out. Her throat had closed up, and she swallowed hard, tears pooling in the corner of her eyes. She simultaneously needed to know and was scared to ask.

He must have heard the waver in her voice, because he immediately pulled the pillow away from his face. "Are you crying?"

"No." But she was - the tears were leaking out no matter how insistently she scrubbed at her face.

"Oh fuck." He sat up, put a hand on her shoulder, tried to turn her towards him. "You are, you're crying, you - oh fuck."

Mike flopped back again, covering his eyes with one arm. "I'm not really mad at you. I’m really really not. I swear I’m not. I’ll shake your hand. Want to shake my hand? I’ll shake your hand.”

She sniffled and shook her head, but allowed him to take her hand. Abruptly, she remembered what she had told Will all those months ago: _Sometimes I don’t know the words. Sometimes Mike doesn’t know the words. Makes me sad. Makes him angry._

Her heart felt too big for her chest. “Mike. I just want to talk.”

“I can’t!” Mike burst out, flinging his arm across the back of the couch, trying to pull himself upright. “You finally feel better, and that’s important, that’s so much more important-”

“Than what?” El demanded, her temper starting to rise.

“Than _me_!” Mike insisted. “I hate this stupid internship, everyone at the hospital are assholes, and all they do is yell at me, and school is so much work and all I want to do is be done with it, and the internship wants me back next year which means that next year is going to be just like this semester but we need the money and I just hate feeling like I’m going to waste this summer knowing I have to go back to that hospital but I can’t give you any of that, I need to take care of you, not make you feel worse-”

“Mike.” She reached up, pressed the tips of her fingers to his lips. “I’m worried. Either I’m worried because you won’t tell me, or we worry together.”

Mike considered this, and then groaned. “I hate that I yelled at Dustin, I shouldn’t have done that. It’s just bullshit. It’s such bullshit. He always used to know what I needed. I hate how different he is. _I hate it_.”

“I know.” El brushed his hair out of his miserable face. “But I think you should tell Dustin that. Instead of yelling at him.”

“And I think -” Mike suddenly lurched towards her, groping wildly. He gagged. “I think you should hand me that barf bucket.”

***

El slammed the trunk of the car shut and turned, leaning against the bumper, squinting in the sun and relishing the heated metal under her bare legs. She was exhausted, and ready to go home.

After Mike had started vomiting, she’d been up half the night cleaning up after him. He’d woken three separate times - managing to hit the bucket every time, at least - and she hadn’t achieved anything more than a light doze, on edge as she listened for the sound of his retching.

She had said her goodbyes to the rest of the Party early, wanting to get on the road as soon as possible. Despite his protests, she was going to have to drive home. Mike was in no state to do anything more complex than recline the passenger seat and try not to throw up on the velvet interior of their car.

Halfway down the block, she watched as Mike and Dustin said their goodbyes. She wasn’t close enough to hear what they were saying, but Dustin’s posture wasn’t defensive. Mike looked too pitiful to be aggressive - wearing his wrinkled clothing from the day before, he was still sick to his stomach, and cradling a large mixing bowl that Lucas had given him for the ride home. He’d forgotten his sunglasses back in Terre Haute, so he was wearing the pair of hot pink heart shaped sunglasses that he’d given El their freshman year of high school.

With satisfaction she saw Mike offer his hand and Dustin take it, and then hug him enthusiastically. She wrinkled her nose - she knew how Mike smelled, and it wasn’t good - but Dustin didn’t flinch away. Instead he patted Mike on the back, and then let him go.

Mike turned from him, slumping towards El and their Buick. Dustin saw that El was watching, and raised a hand, saying goodbye. El waved back, and he was the last thing she saw in the rearview mirror as she navigated the car through the city back to their home in Terre Haute.

It wasn’t long before they were on the highway, out of city limits, and Mike, who had been uncharacteristically silent while she drove, reached across the bench seat and tapped at her leg insistently, fingers brushing her bare skin until she dropped one hand from the steering wheel to clasp his hand.

He squeezed, and she squeezed back, and held his hand the entire ride back to Terre Haute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey here's a fun fact: El and Mike's fight about who was not speaking to who actually happened to me when I was in high school! I'm still friends with her to this day, and we still aren't sure who wasn't speaking to who first.


	6. Just Gonna Have to be a Different Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A member of the Party needs assistance, and they are required to respond. Steve calls them to Indianapolis to celebrate Dustin's 21st birthday.

**Chapter 6: Just Gonna Have to be a Different Man**

**August 18 - Dustin**

***

**July 30th, 1981**

**Pre-Upside Down**

His mom was backing out of the driveway when the door swung open and Mike realized it was a trap.

"No,” he said as soon as he saw Dustin and realized who, exactly, was standing behind him. "No, no way."

Except the station wagon had already turned out of the driveway. Mike just caught the last glimmer of the tail lights through the brush as his mom drove away, leaving him at the mercy of Dustin, Will, and Lucas. He heaved a huge sigh, and then slowly turned around again to face his friends. Zeroing in on Will, he couldn't help complaining, "You tricked me."

"Sorry,” Will replied, only for Dustin to immediately override that: "No he's not. This is too important. Come in."

Lucas walked in front of them, and wouldn't look at Mike. That was just fine, as Mike currently wasn't speaking to him, and had no plans to do so unless Lucas had prepared an apology for the ages. He tried to hang back only for Dustin to put a hand between his shoulders and firmly shove him ahead, like a prisoner being escorted by guards.

The Byers house was eerily quiet - no television playing, no music blaring from Jonathan's room, no barking dog - and Mike felt oddly nervous as he plopped himself down onto the couch and crossed his arms. "What do you want?"

Dustin stood in front of them with his arms crossed like an impatient teacher. Will was standing shoulder to shoulder with him, not quite as imposing but equally determined. "Will and I are instituting a new rule."

Both he and Lucas protested as one (“ _Excuse me?_ ” and “ _What rule?_ ”) only to glare at one another and fall silent again.

“You two are going to shake hands, and you’re going to apologize to each other,” Dustin said firmly.

“Or what?” Lucas challenged.

“Or the Party is over! Done! Kaput!” Dustin snapped back. “And I know I don’t want that. But we can’t go on this way.”

Lucas shut his mouth. Mike felt nauseated. He was mad at Lucas, but he didn’t like the note of finality in Dustin’s voice. It was just another stupid fight, right?

“This isn’t fair to me and Will,” Dustin continued. “Ever since we started our campaign you and Mike fight about every little thing, and then you want us to take sides! We’re supposed to be fighting bad guys, not each other, and we’re not doing it anymore.”

Mike glanced at Lucas, who was looking down at his shoes. Guilt was starting to creep in. He had, in fact, spent the last several days complaining about Lucas endlessly, even when it was obvious that they were bored (Dustin) or didn’t agree (Will). It looked like Lucas had done much of the same.

When neither Lucas nor Mike said anything, Dustin crossed his arms. “This isn’t a choice you two. This is now Rule of Law. We’ll be torn apart by outside forces if we can’t stick together!”

“Guys.” Will’s voice was much quieter, less confident that Dustin’s. “We need you to get along. For all of us.”

Lucas looked at Mike, who tilted his head and gave the smallest shrug. Will was right and he knew it. His dad had been out of the house for just a few years, and Dustin’s dad had died just last year. They probably did need their friends to get along.

“Yeah,” Mike said, wringing his hands.

“Okay,” Lucas echoed.

Both Will and Dustin immediately looked relieved. Mike had not realized how tense they were until their shoulders relaxed and they smiled. “Good. Good. Lucas, you drew first blood -”

“What does that mean?” Lucas was instantly on the defensive.

“It means that Mike was the dungeon master, and he ultimately makes all the big decisions about the campaign. Even though you didn’t like it-”

“It didn’t make sense!” Lucas insisted, throwing up his arms. “Why would I roll for dexterity when -”

“It. Doesn’t. Matter,” Dustin interrupted. “Mike made a decision as the DM, and you derailed the entire campaign fighting him about it. Shake, and let’s move on.”

“Fine.” Lucas turned to Mike and offered his hand, and with relief in his heart, Mike took it gladly.

***

**November 4th, 1984**

**After the Gate**

“Stop following me!” Mike snapped at Dustin, hands jammed in his pockets. For some reason, they were the only part of his body that felt cold, even in the freezing November night.

“I’m not following you,” Dustin replied, much too calmly for Mike’s taste. “You’re pacing around me.”

“Well _stop_!” Mike barely restrained himself from shouting. He wasn’t sure if he could wake up Will all the way in his bedroom from the front porch, but he wasn’t willing to take the chance.

Dustin’s eyebrows twitched. “Do you want me to pace with you?”

“No!” Mike stopped, inhaling sharply, pressing clenched fists against his forehead. He’d only been this tired once before - not quite a year ago, after being escorted through the blood soaked hallways of Hawkins’ Middle School, sobbing in his mother’s arms before losing several hours of his life being grilled by those assholes from the Lab.

This was worse. Last fall everything felt surreal, like he was totally detached from the reality of watching El disappear in front of his very eyes. He could remember sitting very still on the living room couch, picking his words carefully to emphasize that he would never, _ever_ betray El.

Despite the exhaustion, he didn’t think he could stop moving even if he wanted to. He felt jittery and anxious, filled up with half-finished thoughts, flashes of the past two days of violence, and the constant, sinking weight of his total helplessness. The winter air felt too cold in his lungs, each breath slicing like a knife. He felt so hyper focused that his vision was sharper than usual, as though he could count the moons of Jupiter or see individual blades of grass on the Byers’ lawn even in the dark.

“You know she’s okay Mike,” Dustin said, breaking the silence. Mike whipped around, ready to pounce on the outlet that Dustin was providing for his emotions.

“What do you know? You _weren’t_ _there_!” Mike reminded him.

His breath came short as he tunneled into flashes of the last twenty-four hours - Will collapsing in the field, screaming that he was burning, _hesonfirewhyaren’tthedoctorshelping,_ the sinking feeling of hearing Will’s voice and knowing _it’snotWilltalking_ , seeing the blurry image of the demodogs pacing on the monitors in the room _he’strappedthey’retrapped_ \- Bob leaving - Bob reassuring them - running for the door, ears straining, heart pounding, waiting for the hot breath on his neck, _he was gonna die here, theywereallgonnadie_ -

And then ending up in a car with Dustin and Lucas and Max and Steve. _Cruel Summer_ had been playing on the radio. Dustin and Lucas were trying to talk Steve into detouring to McDonald’s on their way back to the Byers house.

(“For _everyone_!” Dustin had insisted. “We haven’t eaten all day!”

“Yeah because we almost _got_ eaten!” Steve had shot back.)

“Mike?” Dustin called, forcing him back to the present. “Hey. You okay? You’re breathing weird.”

As if everything that had happened at the lab - and then in the Byers’ shed, and then in the tunnels - hadn’t been enough, there had been the sickening knowledge roiling in his gut: that however nice Doctor Owens and the nurses had been, however homey they had made the room where Will had been, _that had been where El had grown up._

He hadn’t even seen what had been beyond the doors with the armed guards. Whatever was back there, it was bad.

El had seen that.

El had lived that.

El had escaped that.

And tonight she was marching right back in there.

He wanted to vomit.

“I’m okay,” he mumbled, but his eyes were flooding with hot tears. Pressing the heels of his palms against his eyelids, he sat down on the step next to Dustin. “It’s just… not fair. To Will. Or El. After everything. I can’t believe that’s where he had to go for help this year. Or that she has to go back there at all.”

Dustin nudged him with his shoulder. “It’s gonna be fine, I’m telling you. I bet El’s in better shape than Steve right now.”

(She wasn’t, but they wouldn’t know that for another hour.)

Mike’s face was still in his hands. He couldn’t tamp down his frustration. “Why aren’t you in there with him if you’re so worried?” he sniped.

Dustin went awkwardly silent, and Mike experienced a sudden revelation - it was because Dustin was the only one who could withstand Mike and his bad temper. Will was incapacitated, and Lucas and Max were shaken up enough from being terrorized by Billy. Neither one was currently in the state of mind to sit with Mike while he worried and paced and worried some more.

His emotions warred between feeling stupidly grateful for Dustin’s company, and the creeping shame of his behavior towards his friends the last several months. There was no excuse - except there _was_ , because they were the ones. They were the ones who knew what had really happened, they had seen the blood and the bodies and the Demogorgon - and El. They had witnessed it all, and _still_ they had fallen back into the _everything is normal_ narrative that every single adult in their life had tried to push on them.

Sometimes, he didn’t want to deal with his friends any more than they wanted to deal with him. Which was a singularly ungracious thought, as they had also been the only thing keeping him sane during the last year.

“Steve’s sleeping it off,” Dustin said, and Mike heard something else in his tone.

He straightened up, setting his jaw. “I’m _not_ going back inside, you can’t expect me to sleep -”

“Jesus Mike, no. Chill out. We’re not going anywhere.” Dustin didn’t rise to Mike’s bait at all. Instead, he leaned back, resting his elbows on the step above, an expression of relaxation that flew in the face of the vigil they were currently keeping.

_We_ , Dustin had said. _We’re not going anywhere_. Mike was grateful. Dustin wasn’t shivering, but even in the dim light coming from the Byers’ windows, Mike could see his red nose and fingers. It really was very cold, probably too cold to be waiting outside.

All the same, he couldn’t wait inside. Couldn’t stand seeing Max and Lucas huddled together, or his sister and Jonathan clinging to each other, or even go watch Will sleep, couldn’t stand to exist in the stale environment where everything was winding down while he still felt like he could vibrate out of his skin.

Mike exhaled. “Thanks.” He tried to mirror Dustin’s posture, lean back, but only lasted about thirty seconds before he jumped up and started to pace again.

“She’s gonna be okay Mike,” Dustin said patiently from the steps. “Hopper won’t let anything happen to her.”

Again, the words exploded out of Mike before he could even think about it. “Hopper can’t do anything! He couldn’t save Bob, Bob died!”

“Mike -” Dustin tried to cut him off, but now it was pouring out of Mike.

“He couldn’t help Bob, and he can’t help El, just like we couldn’t! El did everything to protect us last year, even when we were trying to help her, and look at what happened!” His arms jerked, pointing at nothing, but he was beyond thinking about his actions, entirely caught up in his memories of the previous autumn. He could practically taste the ash on his tongue. “She just… disappeared. Right in front of us. You think Hopper can stop that from happening again?”

“Dude, El’s a fucking Jedi. Did you see her tonight? Give her some credit, she looked amazing. She’s going to be _fine_.” Dustin said it so earnestly that it made Mike stop pacing, bite his lip, and consider.

El _had_ looked amazing. She’d taken out the demodogs surrounding them, and hadn’t even tripped coming into the house. She had been completely confident when she’d said she could close the Gate. And most importantly, she had _promised_. He had told her that he couldn’t lose her again, and he had meant it. He wasn’t sure what it meant for him if she didn’t make it out of there, but he knew it would be bad.

But she had understood, because El always had understood, and she had promised to come back. He had to trust her. Friends didn’t lie.

He didn’t trust Dustin’s judgement though. Dustin had tried to keep a demodog as a pet. Dustin had carried candy underground, as if lighting the tunnels on fire hadn’t been a matter of life or death, and had offered a Three Musketeers to a snarling monster from another dimension. Some part of Dustin’s brain had taken all the fear that a rational person should have felt in that moment and told him he was a real life Bewegt Woodward, the Party’s bard. Somehow Dustin had rolled high enough on charisma that he’d convinced _himself_ that everything was going to be okay.

That didn’t mean that Dustin was ultimately wrong though. A small smile tugged at Mike’s lips. “She did look amazing,” he agreed.

He rubbed his hands together, trying to chafe warmth back into them, and sat down next to Dustin again. Mike eyed the shapes of dead demodogs littering the driveway, and made himself two promises: that he would complete his vigil, and that he would never let El be put in a position where she had to promise to come back to him ever again.

***

**November 15th, 1985**

**Freshman Year**

The idea struck him in the middle of AV Club that afternoon; if anyone noticed his abrupt shift in mood (from pensive and anxious to thoughtful and cheered) then they didn’t comment. He’d been worried ever since lunch, when El had told him about the pop quiz they’d had in biology, and the fact that she was sure she’d bombed it.

The news had consumed his thoughts the entire afternoon as he debated how best to help her - they were making flashcards and reading chapters together, doing his best to help her even though they weren’t even in the same biology class.

He wasn’t sure why biology was a struggle. Nancy was helping her with English (along with the tutor Hopper had hired on Wednesday evenings), and she was flourishing in algebra, but something about biology was getting stuck in El’s brain, and he wasn’t sure how to help. She clearly understood the science behind it, even with the language barrier, but it wasn’t translating to good grades yet, and he desperately wanted her to do well in whatever classes she could, knowing that she was behind in language and history.

This was too important. El needed to do well.

He lingered as everyone packed their bags up, snagging Dustin by the elbow as they filtered out of the room. Cece was locking the door and Lucas and Will were walking ahead towards the bike racks outside.

“Hey,” Mike murmured, and Dustin saw something in his expression because he immediately slowed, concern evident on his face. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.” Cece brushed past them, saying goodnight. Will and Lucas were caught up in conversation about the projector they’d been trying to fix and hadn’t noticed that he and Dustin were lagging.

“El’s…” He scuffed his toe against the linoleum, looking around again to make sure no one was listening. El was honest to a fault and would happily talk about school if someone asked her, but that was her choice. He wouldn’t broadcast her struggles to the general public. “El’s having trouble in biology. I was hoping maybe you could work with her.”

Dustin was curiously silent, and when Mike finally worked up the nerve to make eye contact, there was a strange smirk on his face. Fully aware that he was asking a favor, Mike did his best not to snap. “What? What’s the matter?”

“I thought you were working with El in biology,” Dustin said.

“And algebra, and American history, and English,” Mike finished for him. “It’s… look your science grades are better than mine, okay?”

“Lucas and I have the same grade in science,” Dustin pointed out. “Why not ask him?”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this,” Mike complained, frustrated that Dustin was dragging this out. “If you want me to ask Lucas I will, but I thought of you first because El’s really comfortable with you. And I remember you helped Will a lot last year when he started school again after - after everything.”

“Thanks, Mike.” Dustin gave him a wide grin, and Mike instantly felt relieved. “It might be nice to spend some time with El anyway.”

He knew Dustin was baiting him, and still he couldn’t help it. “You’re going to help her study biology.”

“Mike, please.” Dustin held up his hands in a surrendering gesture. “I know you’re jealous but I really need you to rein it in. For El’s sake.”

“I’m not jealous!”

Dustin stared at him, disbelieving. “You hold her hand between classes and gave her a hickey the second week of school. Why don’t you just pee on her and get it over with?”

“Oh my god Dustin, that’s disgusting!” Mike stomped ahead of him, not wanting Dustin to see the blush forming on his face.

“It sounds like you might need some tutoring in biology also!” Dustin called after him. “Can I offer my services?”

***

**June 20th, 1988**

**Summer after Senior Year**

After lunch they all returned to the Byers’ home, and gradually separated. Steve took off from the driveway as the Party piled out of his car - El leaned across the console and kissed him on the cheek - but Jonathan and Nancy came in long enough to change their clothes before leaving together. Nancy hugged Mike tightly before sliding out the door, her expression soft and inscrutable but loving in that resigned way that had become far too familiar to Mike. He wondered what she had heard at home last night after he'd stormed away from his parents, but was too exhilarated by the day to pursue it. His parents hadn't been there and he refused to feel bad about it.

Joyce and Hopper hung around while they all got dressed in more comfortable clothing, ties being thrown over the back of the couch and shoes kicked across the living room. Mike carefully maneuvered his suit back into the garment bag before knocking gently on Joyce's bedroom door, where El emerged with her own dress on the hanger. He zipped them up together.

As he hung the garment bag up on the door to the bedroom, El hugged him from behind, her small hands clasping around his chest, and he rested his palms over them, pressing their hands against his heart. It was done, and there was one more obstacle in the way of anyone who tried to separate them, and he was glad.

When they came back out into the dining room, he was surprised to find that Hopper and Joyce had both left. The dining room table had been stripped of it's normal table cloth and candlesticks. A bottle of champagne was in the middle of the table, and his DnD screen was propped up at the head, their figurines littering a board that Mike had never seen before.

Will was sitting behind the screen. Mike pulled up short. El didn't notice and clipped him, plowing into his side and wrapping her arms around him to hold them both steady. "What is this?"

Dustin put a hand on his shoulder and shoved him towards a chair, forcing his knees to bend so Mike landed on one hip, legs askew. "What the hell Dustin?"

"This is your wedding campaign," Dustin replied, almost gleeful. "Buckle in, because -"

"Dustin,” Will interrupted sternly, and Dustin immediately shut his mouth.

"Don't want to spoil it for anyone,” he amended, pulling out El's chair and gesturing for her to sit.

Mike found out why quickly - the one off campaign that started out under the guise of marrying his paladin and El's mage turned into a chaotic rescue mission as a sleeping giantess that Mike had once trapped Dustin's bard under woke, and finding her lover disappeared, absconded with the first husband she could find: Boone Brightshield, the paladin.

It was the first time he hadn't DM'ed a campaign in over a year - any of them could sit in for Mike, but when it came down to it Lucas wasn't theatrical enough, Dustin was _too_ theatrical (and tended to lose track of details), and Will's ideas usually made them uncomfortable, reminding them that he had seen things that they had not.

(Once, Mike had mentioned the idea of running a campaign to Max, who had made it clear that she had no interest in being a dungeon master, and that she was comfortable speaking for El on the subject. "You already got two girls to play Dungeons and Dragons with you. Quit while you're ahead.")

Ultimately, Mike usually ran campaigns just because he liked to, and it made him feel more comfortable knowing he had the ability to guide the narrative in a way he very much did not in real life. There wasn't that pressure tonight as the campaign went off the rails in the best possible way.

It was supposed to be a simple search and rescue mission - recover their paladin from the giantess that Mike had introduced during Dustin’s infamous Summer of Seduction, and marry him off to the Party’s mage - until Dustin's bard suddenly became jealous of the attention Boone was getting, and was determined to win the giantess back for himself. Instead of chasing after her beloved, El's mage was swept off her feet by a new character that Max had rolled - a thief, who ended up being Max's rogue Zelda in disguise.

(" _Why_?!" both Mike and Lucas shouted.

"I'm planning a coup," Max responded, as if it were obvious.)

It culminated in a chaotic wedding ceremony, where Mike, having unsuccessfully attempted escape, was tied to a stake at the altar. Dustin and Lucas interrupted just as the officiant asked for objections, and though Dustin rolled well enough to woo his beloved back with a song, he bombed the roll for his instrument, which left him declaring his love with a set of bagpipes - complete with sound effects. Max made her appearance, rolling nineteen and successfully tricking everyone into thinking she was the long lost giant king by standing on El's shoulders in a trench coat.

"I'm installing a democracy!" she announced, high fiving El across the table and knocking over several of their figurines in the process.

Mike's stomach hurt from laughing, and when El laid her hand on his knee he took it, squeezing her fingers. She smiled at him over the edge of her coffee cup - where they had poured the champagne due to lack of flutes - and leaned up to kiss him.

They were interrupted by someone shining a light directly into their faces. Breaking apart, Mike shielded his eyes and grimaced at Dustin, who was grinning cheerfully. "Come on, we're going outside to play flashlight tag."

The June night was crisp and clear and perfect, and as they traipsed out into the woods behind the Byers, El hung back, her arm stretching taut as Mike kept walking. When he turned to check on her, he found El reaching for Will.

“Okay?” she asked, taking his hand. Mike’s eyes narrowed.

“I’m fine.” Will smiled, and Mike searched his face, making sure he was honest. Will didn’t like the dark, and didn’t venture into the woods the same as when they were young. He doubted that flashlight tag had been Will’s idea.

Will noticed the doubtful look on Mike’s face and rolled his eyes. “Mike, I’m fine. It’s fine. As long as you guys are here, it’s fine.”

They split, and scattered, and he lost track of El for a time - too long. It was their wedding night, and all he wanted was his wife, to see her face, and to kiss her.

The problem was that El was the best of them at flashlight tag - she could hide almost as well as Will, quiet as a mouse. Luckily, she wanted to find him almost as much as he wanted to see her.

“Got you,” she said, voice soft, and stepped closely enough that the glow from her single flashlight lit up both their faces.

“For as long as you want,” he blurted out, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips. For a moment they gazed at each other, nearly breathless. El’s eyes were shining. “Will you come with me?”

“Anywhere.” El nodded, and he led her away from their friends, stumbling and giggling through the woods. He didn’t have to guide her; she knew where he was going.

They ducked into Castle Byers together, hands clasped. Mike dropped his flashlight as she wrapped one arm around his neck and pulled him down towards her.

“I love you,” she murmured against his lips before kissing him again - again, _again_ , hands sliding into his hair - and he couldn’t help the smile, couldn’t help the laugh that rose up from his gut.

_They were married._

“Let me get the light.” He disentangled from her and reached for the lantern that he knew was in the corner. Before he’d even stood straight again she was back in his arms, her momentum carrying them into the cot and nest of sleeping bags in the corner.

“I love you. _I love you,_ ” she repeated, hitching her leg up high around his hip, clinging to him. “We’re _married._ I love you.”

He pulled away long enough to stroke her hair out of her face, eyes taking in every single detail, committing it to memory. The delicate pearl comb she’d worn to the courthouse had been removed, and her curls were frizzing in the summer humidity. Her eyeliner had smudged in the corners, where she’d dapped her eyes with tissues. Her summer tan made it look like she was glowing in the low light of the lantern, and she was easily the most beautiful thing he’d ever laid eyes on.

“I love you too.” His throat suddenly closed up, and he tried to fight through it. He had to get this out. His fingertips trailed down her cheeks. “El - I. I love you so much - and - and I’m sorry it happened this way -” She stiffened, but he kept going. “You deserve just - so much more. I’m sorry we couldn’t do it right. I wanted to do it right - I can’t even take you on a honeymoon -”

He stopped talking because she sealed her mouth over his. Falling back, holding her hips steady, he let his happen until he felt the wet against his face and realized she was crying.

“El - Please -”

“No Mike.” Her lips were still inches from his, hands clenched in the thin cotton fabric of his t-shirt. “This is how I want it.”

“I’m going to give you everything you want,” he promised, and that was the last thing to be said out loud for a while.

***

**1992**

**Present Day**

It was a sultry Sunday afternoon that found Mike and El in bed together in nothing but their underwear, blinds drawn, fans on high as they tried to sweat out the worst of the afternoon before the evening cooled everything - and everyone - down. Even Garfield wasn’t taking advantage of El’s open lap and was sleeping in the coolest part of the apartment - the bathroom tile, tucked up against the cool porcelain of the bathtub.

El had dozed off, but Mike was having some difficulty. He was sticky and sweaty, his hair uncomfortably hot against his neck and the bedding underneath him oppressively warm with their body heat.

He gazed at her, drinking in her peaceful face and the relief he felt at the sight. This summer had been good for her - much like her garden on the balcony, she had bloomed, grown strong and steady once again. Winter seemed so far away when he saw her like this, with faint tan lines and clean hair, wearing anything but pajamas.

She sighed in her sleep, rolled so her back was to him, and Mike wished he could find rest so easily. School was starting in just two short weeks, and no matter how much he’d tried to prepare for the next semester - his final year of school, if he did everything correctly - he couldn’t stop the ball of anxiety roiling in his stomach.

When the fall semester resumed, so would his internship, and it didn’t matter how much Mike told himself he was lucky to be chosen, that they needed the money, that it would look amazing on his resume and get him much needed references when he started applying for jobs - the fact was, he hated the hospital, he dreaded going in every morning, and if he wasn’t so dedicated to his vision of his - and El’s - future, he would have written it off last February, when he’d been a month in and already knew he hated it.

He’d bear it though, because it meant he could fulfill a long standing promise to El: that he would take care of her no matter what. He could get a good job, and El could do whatever she wanted. Whether that was working her own job or stay at home or backpack through Europe, he didn’t care. If there was anyone on the planet who deserved to do exactly what they wanted, follow on any whim that entered their mind, it was El, and he’d give her all the opportunities that he could afford.

Closing his eyes, he tried to breathe through the anxiety, find a little bit of rest - and then the phone started ringing. He rolled out of bed, trying to get to it before El was disturbed.

He suspected it was Will calling. Will had moved home after the semester had ended, and El was starting to come around, and immediately got a job as a busboy back in Hawkins. As a result, Mike had barely talked to Will, let alone seen him, and he felt strangely bereft when he thought too much about it. He’d gotten used to seeing Will every day, and missed his company.

“Wheeler?” Not Will.

“Ugh,” Mike responded automatically. He leaned back against the kitchen wall and slowly slid to the floor, legs extending in front of him.

“Seriously? That’s how you say hello?” Steve Harrington’s offended voice crackled through the line.

“How did you get my number Steve?” Mike griped, hitting his head gently off the wall. Of all the people he wanted to talk to, Steve wasn’t in the top ten.

“You gave it to me,” Steve reminded him. “Why do we have this conversation every time I call you?”

“What do you want?” Mike asked, looping the telephone cord around his index finger.

"I'm calling to make sure you didn't forget Dustin's birthday next week,” Steve told him.

"I didn't forget." He had, but Mike would rather sniff moldy tennis shoes than admit that to Steve Harrington.

"Good, then you've already made plans to come out here next weekend." Mike’s jaw clenched. Despite the laid-back tone, there was a distinct edge in Steve’s voice, one that indicated his orders would not be so easily overridden.

Steve Harrington had been a presence in Mike's life for almost ten years at this point, and despite spending the last three years of his life with snotty engineering students, arrogant professors, and asshole doctors, nobody else could get under his skin quite the way Steve could.

"Why would we go to your house?" Mike asked. Steve was a state trooper in Indianapolis. El had been to visit before, her and Max making the trip once in high school, but Mike had never been and wasn't particularly interested either.

"Because Dustin has decided he wants to celebrate his 21st birthday in the big city, so we're going to show him a good time and make sure he has the best birthday possible, and then -"

"Ugh, I don't know Steve,” Mike interrupted, covering his forehead with one hand as he thought about making the trip. The cost shouldn't be an issue, unless Steve was counting on him to chip in for beer but: "School is about to start again, I don't know if it's a good idea."

He'd been counting on these last precious weeks before his senior year to prepare mentally for the upcoming semester. All he wanted to do was spend as much time with El as possible, enjoy what free time he had remaining before he was consumed by the dual demands of graduating on time and the biomedical team at Terre Haute Regional Hospital.

"You get your ass down here Wheeler,” Steve said sternly, and Mike blinked at the shift in tone. "And you bring El too."

"I mean, I'll try, I don't know-"

"What's that little rule you guys have? That one about a party member needing assistance?" Mike froze, every muscle going rigid.

"What are you even talking about Steve?"

"I mean you're going to drive out here, and we're going to give Dustin the best birthday he's ever had with his best friends, and then we're going to sit him down and have a talk with him. I've been working on something, I think he'll still listen to me, he always took me seriously in high school." Mike suddenly understood what that edge had been in Steve’s voice - nervousness, not bossiness. Mike had been too busy being annoyed by his general existence to hear it properly.

Mike's eyes widened. "I mean, he always listened to you, yeah. Is he - what do you want to talk about?"

"C'mon Mike, don't tell me your head is so far up your ass that you haven't even noticed what's happening to Dustin," Steve snapped. Mike was surprised at the ferocity in his tone. "He's probably smarter than all of us but at this rate he's going to wash out like Byers' asshole dad."

Mike exhaled, hard. He felt like someone had punched him in the gut. It was the first time anyone had stated that fact so plainly.

That Dustin was obviously struggling was something the Party danced around - everyone wanted better for him, but how to tell him that from a place of concern, without making him feel like they were comparing him to their own successes?

Mike regretted every day the way he had yelled at Dustin on his birthday. He'd been unreasonably angry and stressed beyond his limits. In hindsight, Mike probably would have exploded at a mosquito that tried to bite him.

Ultimately, though, it had come from a place of missing his best friend, who, once upon a time, would have known the best way to cheer Mike up, and his frustration at the poor choices Dustin had been making. The fact that it was the worst possible way for those concerns to manifest was beside the point.

"I - you don't -" His default reaction was to argue with Steve, but his heart wasn't in it, mostly because Mike knew exactly what he was talking about. "You think?"

"What, you think I haven't been out to his neighborhood before?" Steve gave an uncharacteristically nasty laugh. "Don't tell Little Byers, but I've run the plates on Lonnie's fucking pussy wagon at least three times now."

Well, that gave context to Steve's urgency. Steve was confronted with people failing to live up to their potential nearly every day, and if Dustin was still confiding in him the way he had in high school, it would have raised all kinds of red flags to Steve.

Mike thought about Lonnie Byers. He had been on the way out by the time Will and Mike had become friends, but until he'd moved out of Hawkins completely Mike hadn't been allowed to visit the Byers’ home. Mike had never known a time where Lonnie's name didn't inspire varying levels of fear, and anger, and a _here we go again_ sort of resignation.

Had there ever been a time, before Jonathan and Will were even a gleam in his eye and Joyce was just the pretty girl in his English class, that his family or teachers had ever looked at him and seen potential? Thought that he could accomplish anything after high school?

The answer to that was probably no, but it didn't stop Mike from wondering if they would be having the same conversation about Dustin in another ten, twenty years. He wanted to vomit. Bending his legs, he curled up, resting his forehead against his knees. "What do you need from me?"

"Jesus, I’m not extorting you. Just show up, okay?" Steve's tone was much more gentle now. "Next Friday night. Dustin's coming out early, but we won't go out until later, so come whenever, if you're working or whatever. Make sure you bring El, yeah?"

"I don't go anywhere without El," Mike said irritably. "She's my wife."

"No, I know,” Steve reassured him. "I just didn't want you to leave her behind in case... things got ugly or something. To protect her. I know she doesn’t like people yelling. I don't know."

Mike's eyebrows rose. "Do you really think it could get ugly?"

It wasn't like Dustin was famous for his temper. In fact, compared to Mike and Lucas, Dustin was downright gentle. The rule about shaking hands had been Dustin's idea in the first place, because he was sick of him and Will being asked to referee arguments between Mike and Lucas.

"I don't know." Steve repeated. "I don't think so, but I don't know how he'll react. I'm hoping that if we go out and celebrate his birthday and make sure he knows we give a shit about him it'll soften the blow when we try and talk to him."

_Make sure he knows we give a shit about him_. Guilt lanced through Mike’s chest as he remembered the way he had yelled at Dustin, and the brief conversation they’d had the morning after Lucas’s birthday party, when Mike had offered Dustin his hand.

The concrete had been hot and glaring, forcing him to squint even behind El’s sunglasses. He’d been fully aware that he had looked like a mess, wearing El’s heart shaped sunglasses and his hair sticking up in all directions, but Dustin hadn’t been laughing.

In fact, he’d been serious, almost solemn. Mike had grimaced, glancing at El, who’d been waiting at the car and held out his hand to Dustin and said, “I’m sorry. I totally overreacted both last night and at my birthday. I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”

Dustin’s face had been gratified. “You know - you know I feel really bad about what I said at Will’s? I wasn’t trying to make light of your problems. I just - it’s just - like, crazy to me. You’re worried about some of the same things my mom is worried about. It just feels like we’re still way too young to be worried about that stuff.”

Mike had shrugged. It was hard, and it was going to be hard for a while more, but he was dedicated - to El and their horrible cat and his major and his internship - for the greater good. Once he graduated, things wouldn’t have to be so hard. “I know. It’s a lot, and it’s pretty stressful but…. It’s gotta be this way. I don’t regret anything. Except that I didn’t offer you any birthday cake.”

It was then that Dustin had thrown his arms around Mike’s neck, somehow not put off by the stench of bile that still clung to him. “Maybe next year,” he’d said, and despite the pit of anxiety Mike felt when he thought about where he’d be the next April, he’d smiled and nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah that’s not a bad idea.” He’d gone back to El then, and despite his miserable hangover he’d still noticed the way Dustin had watched them pull away, something wistful on his face.

Mike’s throat was in imminent danger of closing up. “Yeah,” he croaked down the phone line. “That’s a good idea. We’ll be there.”

“Good,” Steve said, and then, “Look, I still gotta call Lucas and Max, but I’ll see you next week, all right?”

“See you next week,” Mike parroted back.

Steve hung up then, but MIke sat on the floor for a few more minutes, the phone line beeping at him impatiently. Finally he hauled himself up, sweaty skin peeling from the linoleum, and hung the phone back on the receiver.

El was still laying on her side when he walked back into the bedroom, but she stirred when he gingerly sat on the edge of the bed. She made a sleepy, confused noise that was vaguely shaped like words. Mike interpreted it to mean _Is everything okay?_

“Go back to sleep,” he ordered gently, laying back even though he knew he’d never drop off himself at this point. “We’ll talk when everything cools off later.”

She never agreed or disagreed. All she did was roll over, throwing an arm around his waist despite the heat, and press her face into his flank. “Night,” El mumbled, already half-asleep.

***

The Friday after Dustin's birthday was rainy and dreary. They were later than they'd planned - Mike had gotten lost in the backstreets of Indianapolis - but El didn't seem impatient. He'd been watching her out of the corner of his eye. She'd been quiet the entire drive, but seemed excited to see everyone, especially Steve, whom they hadn’t seen for almost two years.

After Steve had called and they'd finished their afternoon nap, they'd sat out on the balcony, watching the sunset and picking cherry tomatoes off the vine for a snack. El had been uncertain about confronting Dustin and why, exactly, he needed talked to anyways.

"Well... You know Dustin hasn't really been himself lately, right?" Mike had asked carefully, watching her face to see how she'd react. It had been a long time since they'd had to have a conversation where he explained certain facets of human emotions and culture, but he didn't think interventions had come up before.

El had blinked. "I haven't been myself lately either."

"That's different,” Mike had protested.

"Why is it different?"

He’d turned, and taken her hand, rubbing his thumb over her palm in soothing circles. "Because you're trying your best. None of us think Dustin is trying at all, and he can do a lot if he just tries. You can't help what happened to you."

"Maybe Dustin can't help what happened to him," El had suggested, biting her lip. Even though she’d agreed to the trip, he wasn’t sure he’d convinced her that Steve’s idea was in Dustin’s best interest.

He didn’t know if Dustin could help himself or not. The fact was that none of them had wanted to embarrass him and ask - and they had done him a disservice by doing so. At first they’d all taken him at face value when he'd said he was taking a year off, but it was long since past when they should have tried to find out what was going on, and help him if he needed it.

Rule of Law, and they’d all failed.

"This is it," El said, glancing down at the map spread out in her lap. She had a set of handwritten directions from Steve and had been trying to help Mike recover from their initial missed turn.

"Oh yeah," Mike muttered, leaning forward to see the house numbers better. "Stonecrest Drive, right?"

"Yes," El agreed, attempting to fold the map back up. "Eight-Two-Six."

Lucas's Cavalier was there, and so was the Pinto. "I think we're the last ones," Mike said, pulling in behind Will.

Steve's house was one of the smaller ones in the neighborhood - a single story, brick ranch that stuck out in an upper middle class block filled with split levels and butterfly roofs. The tiny front yard was surrounded by a chain link fence, and Mike, who had spent the summer mowing lawns and trimming hedges, grimaced when he saw the prickly holly bushes framing the landing of the front steps.

Before he could even knock, the front door was yanked open, and a smiling, laughing Dustin Henderson was scooping El into an enthusiastic hug. El dropped her overnight bag onto the damp pavement of Steve's porch. "El! Mike! You came! Steve was getting antsy too, perfect timing!"

"Antsy for what?" Mike asked as he was swept into the house. He was getting nervous - Steve had told them to come out whenever, and Mike had been expecting a laid back house party with lots of booze, like Max's birthday. He hadn't budgeted for anything more expensive than chipping in for pizza and helping to clean up the house the next day.

It turned out that Steve had planned much more than that. The reason he'd been getting impatient was because he'd bought movie tickets, and he was eager to get to the theater and get good seats.

The film was _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ , and it came as a surprise for Mike to realize he couldn't remember the last time they had gone to the movies. He and El had cobbled together a small collection of VHS cassettes, mostly birthday presents, after his parents had gifted them a VCR the previous Christmas, but they were careful with their money, and rarely splurged on anything beyond the occasional Chinese take out.

It was strange to him - in high school they'd gone to the movies constantly, almost every week, especially during that year when Steve had worked at the Hawk and Dustin was on a mission to wheedle free popcorn from him. The foundations of their friendships could be found in movies - _The Empire Strikes Back, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Ghostbusters_ and _Lethal Weapon_ were some of his fondest memories with the Party.

The movie was actually terrible, but Dustin, Max, and Lucas were enthralled. Mike had a hard time paying attention. He spent most of the movie with his arm around El, lost in thought.

Maybe Dustin was right. Maybe he was too young to be worrying about things like paying bills and his resume and his wife. Maybe it was crazy to even be married at this point. Maybe he and El could have managed the separation, and he could have been in a better position financially, and they could do stuff like go to the movies the way they used to in high school.

It was hard to think that way when he remembered the week after they had first moved to Terre Haute, before school had started. They had still been newlyweds in a strange city, with nothing in the apartment but the radio and each other to entertain themselves with.

Or when he had made the Dean's List his first semester, shooting up the steps with the letter in his hands, and the way she had yelled and clapped and jumped into his arms even though she had no idea what the Dean's List was or why it was good, only that he was proud of his achievement and that she was proud of him too.

Or staying way too late at the library studying for his finals, only to find that she had dozed off on the couch in the common area, wanting to be close to him but not underfoot. She had been adorably sleepy on the walk back to their apartment, linking her arm through his and making the street lamps flicker every time she yawned.

Or their first anniversary, when they'd had no money for any kind of gift to one another, and had shut themselves up into the apartment for a full two days, chasing her while she shrieked and laughed and let him haul her up onto the kitchen counter, or the wall of the shower, the back of the loveseat, and once, in one of the plastic chairs they had out on their tiny balcony. He’d been kneeling in front of her, and the sight was one that he flashed back to at the most inopportune moments: El with her head thrown back, skin glowing in the fading evening sunset.

How could he have ever traded those memories for something easier?

By the end of the movie, the weather had cleared, though it was still damp and breezy. They walked down the street to a pizza place that sold slices out of a to-go window. It was still early evening, and their little group descended upon a set of benches that surrounded a fountain, chattering loudly about the movie.

El ate a piece with pepperoni and sausage and mushrooms, and then picked all of the cheese off of a second slice and gnawed off the crust, eventually throwing the remaining slice of limp bread for the birds to pick at. Dustin and Lucas argued over whether or not it was worth paying for extra cheese (“It just slides off when you bite into it!” Lucas was insisting) while Will and Max were talking about car maintenance - Max was still saving up, but thought she’d be able to afford something before Thanksgiving.

Mike was just shoving his last bite of crust into his mouth when El nudged him gently in the side.

“Wish,” she said in her soft voice, and Mike wasn’t sure he heard her correctly.

“What’s that?” heasked, leaning closer to her.

“Make a wish,” she repeated, pointing to the fountain. “I need coins.”

“Oh.” He dug into his pockets, pulled out two dimes, but when he offered them to her she would only take one.

“You too,” she insisted, wrapping a hand around his wrist and tugging gently.

He didn’t even think about it until he and El were standing at the edge of the fountain, gazing at all the glittering coins that littered the bottom. The Party had gone silent.

“Dude,” Lucas called. “Are you seriously making a wish right now?”

Mike cringed, but El was nonplussed. “You too,” she ordered gently. “You have coins?”

They all looked at each other, and then shrugged and stood up. It wasn’t the first time they’d bowed to one of El’s whims, and it wouldn’t be the last. One by one, they stood, until the seven of them were standing shoulder to shoulder at the fountain’s edge.

They tossed their coin into the water in turn, and when it came to Mike he looked at his wife out of the corner of his eye, and thought about how happy and healthy and lovely she looked at this moment, and his persistent fear of the next school year, and how he wouldn’t trade for anything that made his life easier if it meant he no longer had this.

_I wish I can always take care of her_ , he thought, and kissed the coin, and threw it into the fountain.

“All right Steve!” Dustin clapped his hands and rubbed the palms together, like an evil scientist. “What’s next? Is it time for the good stuff?”

“I got something in mind,” Steve hedged, and started walking away from them, beckoning them to follow. “C’mon losers.”

Mike followed, his heart dropping in his chest. He’d actually been having a great time with his friends, and wasn’t ready to lose that yet to the haze of alcohol.

To his delight, however, what Steve had in mind was an arcade - just like The Palace back in Hawkins, complete with loud techno music, dinging machines, and that weird extra thick carpet that bounced back slightly against the soles of his feet. Mike sucked in a breath. In the blink of an eye, he was thirteen again, especially as he realized -

“Shit,” he said, reaching for his wallet. “Where’s the change machine? I don’t think I have any quarters.”

“Relax, I got you.” Steve was already unwrapping a roll of quarters, and Mike felt his hackles rise. The others, however, held out their palms like obedient children, disappearing down the aisles in search of their favorite games. Max clamped a hand around El’s forearm and dragged her away, though El looked elated rather than apprehensive.

Mike looked at Steve, who was holding his hand, waiting to give him a small stack of quarters. “What is this Steve?”

“Are you going to be weird about this?” Steve asked flatly, raising an eyebrow. “Look, I’m not trying to insult your pride or anything. I just want Dustin to have a good birthday.”

Mike pursed his lips but didn’t say anything, holding Steve’s gaze.

He caved, and gestured around impatiently. “I want to remind him that he can have fun without alcohol, okay? This is shit you nerds loved in high school.”

Mike eyed him suspiciously, and Steve jingled his hand impatiently. “Just take the fucking quarters Wheeler, I swear to god.”

He wanted to protest, he really did, but then he glanced up, and above Steve’s shoulder he saw it.

Q*Bert.

Snatching the quarters out of Steve’s hand, Mike mumbled _Thanks Steve!_ and rushed over to the machine, examining it with something akin to wonder before shoving his first quarter in. He hadn’t seen a Q*Bert game in years. Q*Bert had always been his favorite, something Lucas had never stopped giving him grief over, but it was also the only game he could consistently beat the others and keep the high score - not even Max had toppled his high score in Q*Bert, something he took pride in despite the fact that she claimed it was because she thought the game was boring.

Then it really _was_ like he was thirteen again - except it was so much better, because he didn’t have an angry and impatient mom and dad waiting for him at home, and _El was there_ , El whom he’d missed so much that he’d called to her on a dead channel every night for almost a year, and Will was there too, and Mike wasn’t worried about Will anymore, because Will was safe now.

It was so much better than he’d ever thought it could be at thirteen.

Lucas materialized behind him at some point, watching over his shoulder. “Holy shit man, you’re going to get the high score!”

He did, and it was Dustin standing behind him clapping him on the back as he proudly entered the initials A-S-S into the top slot, something that had the entire party giggling even if Steve was rolling his eyes and muttering about how immature they all were.

Max exhausted Steve’s supply of quarters - and then raided both Lucas and Dustin’s wallets - so she could defeat Donkey Kong, and it was only then that they finally left the arcade, their ears ringing as Steve led them to a little dive bar not far from his house.

It was dark and dingy, and despite being packed late on Saturday night, it was quiet enough for them to hear each other talking. Most of the bars and parties that Mike had been to has music blasting so loudly that he couldn’t hear himself think, but this, he thought, was almost comfy. It was clearly Steve’s watering hole, because the bartender raised a hand in greeting and called out “Harrington!”

“Help yourself guys,” Steve said to them, smiling as the bartending pulled a tap, pouring a beer for Steve without even taking his order. “My credit is good here.”

A booth in the corner opened up while they were still at the counter deciding what they wanted, and Steve went to save it, Dustin trailing after him with his beer and a shot of whiskey.

“Man,” Max remarked as soon as they were out of hearing range. “Steve must be really worried.”

“You think?” Lucas asked, distracted as he shoved the lime slice into his bottle of Corona.

Max gave him a disbelieving look. “He’s bankrolling all of this just to make Dustin happy.”

_So he’ll have a good memory in case the intervention tomorrow goes poorly,_ Mike thought, but before he could voice this opinion El tugged at his sleeve and said quietly, “I want a beer too.”

“You sure?” he asked, eyes searched her face. He didn’t want her to drink just so fit in, and he _really_ didn’t want her to trigger herself again, especially in the name of something as stupid as Dustin’s 21st birthday.

“Just one.” She nodded, confident. “Too many is bad, but one beer is okay. Won’t get drunk.”

“I won’t either,” he promised, and signalled for two beers.

Except - the night got away from him. It wasn’t like Lucas’s birthday party, when he’d been angry and wanted to smother his feelings like an out of control wildfire, but it was easy to lose track of both time and how much he’d had to drink with the seven of them sitting around the table, trading drinks and throwing pretzels at one another. El was an easy and familiar weight in his lap - even as Dustin rolled his eyes and muttered something about flashbacks to high school - and Max was irritating in the best possible way, and Dustin and Lucas started bickering, and Will (who was drinking only soda) just looked happy to be there, constantly exchanging knowing looks with El.

El sipped at her single beer, and her face was never anything less than transcendently happy. The other’s foolishness - and his own, considering their infamous Wolverine vs. Spiderman debate came up yet again - didn’t seem to bother her, and she even let Max take her by the hand and spin her under her arm when _I Wanna Dance with Somebody_ started playing over the jukebox.

Unlike Dustin, Max, and Lucas, Mike stuck to beer, passing when they offered him shots, but drinking enough to maintain a good buzz - enough that the tension had melted from his shoulders, but was confident that he wouldn't get sick later.

At last call Steve shuffled them out, shushing them as Dustin started singing loudly, only for Lucas and Max to both pick up the tune. The summer humidity had sweetened into a crisp, refreshing night, and the walk home was good for Mike - it took the edge off his drunkenness, enough that he probably wouldn’t be terribly hungover. El clung to his hand, giggling every time Dustin’s voice cracked as he sang.

“Dude, you assholes need to keep it down,” Steve hissed as Max picked up the tune again, only to be joined by Dustin’s enthusiastic _I bless the raaaAAAIIINns down in Africaaa_. “This is a residential block. Stop shouting or I’ll throw you in the drunk tank myself!”

By the time Steve herded them back to his house, got everyone settled on the floor in piles of sleeping bags and blankets - Dustin got the couch, since it was his birthday, and Steve adamantly refused to share his room with any of them on account of he’d paid for the entire night - Mike was yawning, sleepy, and content.

The living room was stuffy with all of them packed together - Steve had left the windows open and the ceiling fan was on, but still he sweat. Sleep wouldn’t come. Mike laid on his back, staring at the fan, El’s weight comfortable against him. Max was snoring, and Lucas was drooling, and Mike still felt oddly exhilarated.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had so much fun without any of those awful whispers in the back of his brain - reminding him about school, and bills - and in the morning, he knew he’d be sad to drive back to Terre Haute.

At some point he must have dozed, because he abruptly returned to consciousness and found El had rolled away from him in her sleep. He was parched, desperate for water, and as he crept into the kitchen realized he had no idea where Steve kept his glasses. Mike was prepared to drink straight from the tap if he needed.

The cabinet next to the sink had coffee mugs, and Mike snatched one, only to nearly drop it when a voice suddenly said, “Hey man.”

It was Dustin sitting at the little picnic style table in Steve’s kitchen. He’d slid into the bench seat, and had his own mug that Mike assumed was water.

“Geez you scared me.” Mike held his hand to his chest, heart thumping underneath his palm.

“Sorry,” Dustin replied, voice pitched low. “I was trying _not_ to scare you.”

“It’s all right,” Mike replied, running the tap and sitting down across from Dustin. “Why are you up? You sick?”

“Nah, too drunk to sleep.” Dustin rubbed at his eyes. “Gotta get through the worst of it or it’ll be way worse in the morning. Everything’s spinning when I lay down. What about you? Are you sick?”

“Just… keyed up,” Mike said, leg already jiggling under the table. He looked down at the mug, then back up at Dustin. “We had fun tonight, yeah?”

“So much fun,” Dustin agreed. “I had no idea Steve had all that planned, I thought we’d do a bar crawl or something.”

“Yeah that was good.” Mike smiled. “I kind of hate to go back and start school. Felt like we were in high school again.”

Dustin fell silent for a long minute, and then asked, voice hesitant and vulnerable, “Is college really that bad? Everytime I talk to you you’re like, crazy stressed out.”

“It is stressful. Engineering is a tough program, and the biomed internship is super demanding.” Mike shrugged, and then suddenly for the first time in four years gained the courage to ask, “Is that why you never went?”

It was a question that had always bugged him. In high school Dustin had bragged about the big name colleges he was applying to - and Mike thought he had a chance of getting in. He’d been expecting Dustin to pack up for Boston or Philadelphia, not pack it in at the Alley Tavern with the other Hawkins losers.

“No. No, it’s -” Dustin cut himself off with a frustrated noise. “I just realized that I had no idea what to do.”

“What does that even mean?” Mike made a face even though he knew Dustin couldn’t really see him in the dark. “Your grades were better than mine. You were going to go into biology and be an awesome scientist. Everyone knew it.”

Dustin was quiet for a long time. Mike was starting to worry that he’d just ruined Dustin’s birthday when Dustin suddenly blurted out, “My dad worked for Hawkins lab.”

“You dad _what_?” Mike repeated, sure he hadn’t heard completely.

“My dad. I completely forgot until my mom reminded me when I was applying to college. He was a chemist for Hawkins Lab. It’s the entire reason we moved to Hawkins in the first place.” Dustin’s voice was low and devastated. Mike was stunned. Dustin _never_ talked about his dad.

Mike scrambled to do the math. “But - you moved here in fourth grade - when -”

“El was there, yeah.” Dustin nodded. “I don’t know if she ever saw him, or if he knew about her. Or if he knew anything they were doing. He only worked there for three months before…”

“Wow.” Mike exhaled, processing. He didn’t have many memories of Dustin’s dad. Mostly, he just remembering thinking that Dustin’s parents were so much fun - loud, gregarious, and welcoming from the first time Dustin introduced them to the Party. He vaguely remembering his mom suggesting that Dustin was spoiled, because his parents would indulge him anytime he had a new interest, whether it was electronics or board games or science project, which led to Mike and his friends begging their parents for the same things. “So… wow.”

Dustin nodded. His shoulders were slumped, and Mike suddenly wished he had tried to talk to Dustin a long time ago. It was clearly a heavy weight on his shoulders. “So yeah, I wanted to go be an awesome scientist. I always thought I’d be able to study all this shit that we’ve been through. Like, we literally went into another dimension Mike. We went into those tunnels and it was an actual separate dimension from ours. That’s like, Lovecraftian! I wanted to dissect demodogs and those weird vines.”

“And you didn’t… because of your Dad?” Mike asked, struggling to connect the dots. He hoped the dark was making it easier to talk, because it was the first time in almost four years that Mike felt like he was talking the real Dustin Henderson - his friend, who had pulled the Party together in the first place, who had understood before any of them how much they really needed one another.

“Well yeah. I always thought my dad was this super important and awesome scientist. And maybe he was! But look at what you have to do to work with that stuff.” Dustin sounded depressingly resigned. “Hawkins Lab discovered a human with actual powers like the X-Men, made contact with an entirely new dimension, but they weren’t trying to see if any of the plants could cure cancer or looking to see if Demogorgon skin could make some kind of new superplastic. They were torturing our best friends.”

He gestured weakly towards the living room. “Look at what the smartest people in our country did to El and Will. I couldn’t be like that. I could never do that. I can’t believe my dad did that. And… once I thought of it like that, then I didn’t know what to do.”

And suddenly, Mike understood what had happened to Dustin senior year.

They all had their scars from their encounters with the Upside Down. El and Will's were the most prominent, the most obvious, but Mike experienced crippling anxiety, and had made nightly radio calls to El right up until they'd moved in together. Lucas was scared of blood, and sometimes got distant, channeling his energy into physical conditioning, running and lifting weights, so that next time he'd be faster and stronger. Max could get jumpy, easily startled and sensitive to feeling cornered or trapped - not quite claustrophobic, but always looking for an escape route, hands flexing as if holding a baseball bat.

But Dustin? Dustin, with respect to the traumas of his friends, had never been anything but excited about the potential scientific advancement from the Upside-Down. Mike understood that senior year had been the first time that he’d realized the reality of the situation: that to create such scientific breakthroughs himself, he might end up complicit in experiments that were unethical at best.

And Dustin was one of the best people Mike knew. He shook his head. “You’re not like that. You couldn’t. You wouldn’t have let any of it happen in the first place.”

"No," Dustin agreed sadly. "I couldn't have. But I realized I had no idea what to do instead."

He fell silent, and Mike could hear his fingers drumming against the side of his cup. "Do you know now? What you want to do instead?”

“I want…” Dustin’s voice was soft and wistful. “I want to stop it from happening again.”

He said it so simply that for a moment Mike actually believed it was possible. “I wish it were that simple.”

“I don’t think it’ll be simple at all,” Dustin muttered in agreement, slumping forward to rest his chin in his hands.

Mike was quiet as he thought about everything. Putting all of Dustin’s behavior in context with this new knowledge, Mike could now see with clarity how frightened Dustin must have been. He’d wanted to be a proper scientist ever since they were kids, it was all he’d ever talked about when the subject of their future had come up. It must have been devastating to feel like that dream had crumbled, that it wasn’t the noble, passionate pursuit he’d thought it would be.

He thought of El, telling him about the Bad Men holding her down and sedating her. He thought about Will and the fake body that he’d watched the Lab drag out of the quarry. He thought about the enormity of what they’d faced as adolescents only to be told to grow up and be productive members of society.

Sighing, Mike said, “God our lives are fucked up.”

Dustin snorted, an uncharacteristically cynical response from his friend. "I used to think our lives were cool.”

Mike shook his head. “There is nothing cool about the last year.”

“No, there really isn’t,” Dustin agreed. “I don’t know how you held it together with El and school and everything.”

"I only know that I'm trying to take care of El," Mike said. "It was good to see that I don’t want to go into the biomedical field I guess. And it was good to get paid. That was pretty much the only thing that got me through it. I have no idea what I’ll do with this degree next year. I’ve been so focused on El that I was shocked to find out that there was a field in engineering I didn’t like. "

"How can you run yourself ragged when you don't even know what you're working towards?" Dustin asked, and before Mike could respond, followed up with, "We can all see it you know."

Mike opened his mouth, thought about arguing, and then closed it again. There was no point in refuting Dustin's statement. He was exhausted, and still had another year to grind out. "It's just... really important to me to get a good job. For El. If there's anyone in the world that deserves to be taken care of, it's her. She shouldn't have to worry about anything ever again."

"Except for you?" Dustin asked, and Mike grimaced. "You gotta take care of yourself too."

"I know." But the defense sounded hollow, half-hearted.

"All I'm saying is that it sounds really hard to do by yourself," Dustin pointed out. "Especially the _taking care of El_ part. Remember what happened when Hopper tried to do it by himself? The year we didn't know she was even alive?"

The reminder of 1984 always hurt Mike's heart. He shrugged, and when Dustin realized Mike wasn't going to answer, he continued:

"She hitchhiked to Chicago and joined a street gang."

"She took a bus,” Mike responded automatically.

“Come on Mike,” Dustin said impatiently. “Think of how much easier it got once she had you, and us, and Joyce and even your Mom. All of a sudden El was happy, and she was learning things, and she was eating again and wasn’t breaking shit in the cabin on purpose anymore. She needed us. All of us.”

Mike’s gut instinct was to argue - to defend himself, defend El. He didn’t like how Dustin had implied that El was high maintenance, or that Mike wasn’t making wise decisions. But the fact was, he was tired, and El had needed more help than he was able to give this winter.

“Mike,” Dustin pressed, when Mike didn’t respond. “Do you remember why we even came up with the rule to help a party member who needed assistance?”

Yeah. He remembered. Mike bit his lip.

“ _You_ came up with it in fourth grade, when my dad died three months after we moved to Hawkins.” Mike hadn’t thought of those awful days for a long time. “I was already the new kid, and then my dad died, and you and Lucas and Will were the only people who would even talk to me still, and when I asked why, you said that if a member of the party needed assistance, it was your duty to provide that assistance. I wasn’t even sure I was a member of the party until then.”

“You were,” Mike whispered roughly. It had always been him and Will and Lucas up until that point, and Mike had known Dustin belonged to them from their first school lunch, when he’d gleefully shared his Pop-Rocks with the table. “We knew from the first week of school.”

“Then don’t break your own rule,” Dustin said, almost urgently. “We’ll provide assistance if you need it.”

“I asked Will for help,” Mike grumbled, but he could feel the heat in his cheeks.

"You asked Will for help with _El_ ," Dustin said flatly. "I'm willing to bet that if she hadn't needed help this winter you wouldn't have asked him for anything. I'm not even sure you would have asked El, and you're married to her."

Before Mike could reply - and what would he reply with? Dustin was right and he knew it - someone stumbled into the kitchen, hands waving wildly.

"Will!" Dustin exclaimed, standing up. "Are you okay?"

"Bathroom?" Will croaked, eyes squinting and mostly asleep.

"You're a little turned around, buddy,” Dustin muttered, putting both hands on Will's shoulders and turning him towards the right direction.

Instead of following, Mike wandered back into the living room. A street light across the street let a low, warm light into the room, casting long shadows, and Mike noticed the way Max and Lucas, happy and drunk, had sprawled out across the floor next to each other. Max’s snoring was louder than ever - or had he forgotten from high school?

El was right where he'd left her, curled into herself, blanket wrapped around her legs. As soon as he laid down next to her she stirred and turned towards him, eyes still closed. He held his breath, waiting to see if she'd wake up, but all she did was roll onto his pillow and sigh.

They were almost nose to nose. He reached one finger out, brushed her bangs off her forehead, and closed his eyes, arm thrown loosely over her shoulders.

***

When he woke up, El was still under his arm, but the rest of the living room was empty. El was awake, blinking at him contentedly with sleepy eyes. He did a body scan, trying to figure out if he was hungover or not, but all he had was a dry throat and a low grade headache.

Mike stretched and felt his back pop, wincing as his stiff and achy muscles protested. Beside him, El protested with a drowsy grunt, closing her eyes and trying to burrow into his side.

"No," he scolded, twisting his neck to look back into the kitchen, where he could hear voices. They weren't even attempting to be quiet - Dustin was talking loudly over everybody, while Steve was snapping at Max to move away from the stove - and Mike couldn't help wondering how he'd slept through it as everyone had woken up and migrated into the kitchen.

"Come on,” he prodded, pulling her up as he stood, even as she whined and ducked under his arm so that the two of them staggered into the kitchen as one.

"Wheelers!" Steve exclaimed when they appeared.

"How did you drink less than anyone else and wake up last?" Max asked. She was sitting on the counter next to Steve's sink, a carton of orange juice in her hands.

"Get a glass!" Steve reached for the carton in her hands, which she held out of reach. "You think I want your germs in my orange juice?"

Lucas snorted, his head in his hands. "Steve's afraid of Max Cooties."

Max stuck her tongue out, while Steve brandished the spatula at him. "Just for that, you get served last Sinclair."

"What do you want?" Dustin asked Mike, who realized he was watching the scene with a big dumb grin on his face. "There's orange juice, and coffee, and -"

"Coffee," Mike and El both croaked. Mike took a seat at the end of the bench, and El, still half asleep, curled up on his lap, dropping her head on his shoulder.

"We have enough chairs you know.” Lucas rolled his eyes at Mike and El's easy intimacy.

“More comfy,” El responded without even lifting her head.

Will handed over two coffee cups. "Remember when they’d sit this way at lunch in high school?"

“Nice to know some things never change.” Dustin toasted them, and El held up her cup of black coffee in reply.

"I'm not a goddamn waitress," Steve complained. "Max, stop spitting in my orange juice and get some plates already."

There were pancakes, bacon, toast and jam, and Mike was surprised at how easy it all felt. Max and Lucas were definitely hungover, and Dustin's pallor was tinged green, but they all looked better with some food and good humor.

He waited until most of their plates were clear; after Dustin served himself seconds, Steve cleared his throat. "All right Henderson, let's talk."

They all fell silent. Dustin's face pinched, looking confused.

"What's going on?" he asked, glancing down and then back up again. "I know I said I liked sausage links better than bacon, but I didn't mean to be ungrateful..."

"Come on Dustin,” Steve sighed. He fidgeted in his seat, nervously tapping his fork against the edge of his plate. "I've been trying to figure out a way to talk to you about this for a while, and I promised myself I'd do it by your 21st birthday, so..."

Dustin tensed, eyebrows drawing down.

"You're legal now," Steve said. His voice was serious, and for the first time Mike could see him as a competent police officer. It was a tone that was congenial but still made him sit up straight. "You don't need other people to buy you alcohol anymore. Which means it's going to be really easy for you to go by yourself and pick up a bottle on a Tuesday afternoon and -"

"Steve, I’m not going to do that, I have classes on Tuesdays now," Dustin interrupted. Mike's eyebrows rose, and El lifted her head from his shoulder.

"You wha-?" Now Steve was the one who looked confused.

Suddenly, Mike understood why Dustin had asked him about his classes the night before - _is college really that bad?_ \- before dropping the bomb about his dad. "You're starting college, aren’t you Dustin?"

He blushed. "Yeah. Just starting with some classes at the community college, but we'll see. I can transfer later if I want. I thought..." He trailed off, staring down at his lap and refusing to make eye contact. They all held their breath, waiting patiently for him to speak again. "Well I thought I'd start with some science classes, but... I'm thinking about teaching, you know? My dad always made everything seem so cool, I want to do that too. Teach kids how to be careful with all this cool exciting stuff out there."

Dustin looked up then and made eye contact with Mike, who flashed him an encouraging smile. _I want to stop it from happening again._ Dustin wouldn’t have to become a bad man, and he was hopefully going to prevent anyone else from joining their ranks.

Steve deflated, slumping against the table and dropping his head into his hands. "Oh thank god. Thanks god dude. I did not want to have this conversation."

"It was a whole conversation?" Dustin repeated dumbly.

"Yes!" Steve snapped, arms flailing. "I had a whole spiel and everything about how smart you are and how dumb you've been acting."

"Not dumb," El said frowning at Steve. Then, to Dustin, she added, "You'll be a good teacher."

Mike remembered then how Dustin had always been El's favorite tutors in high school, helping her with biology and chemistry especially. He nodded in agreement. "If that’s what you want, you’ll be a great teacher."

One by one, they took turns congratulating Dustin, making sure he knew they all supported him with slaps to the back and gentle hugs. Dustin was clearly bolstered by the encouragement; he’d been obviously embarrassed at first, and Mike felt guilty when he thought of why Dustin was afraid to tell them his plans.

When it came around to Steve again, he was still frowning.

"No more boozing with those jackasses from the Hawk?" he asked seriously.

Dustin rolled his eyes. "Steve, they're _your_ friends."

" _You're_ my friend, jackass." Steve cuffed Dustin around the neck and hugged him roughly. "All right, all of you finish your breakfast and get the hell out of my house."

A chorus of protests rose, ranging from " _But I'm still drunk!"_ (Max) to " _We didn't even get cake!"_ (Dustin).

"Shut up Steve," Mike declared. He felt lighter than he had in months, positively giddy to be surrounded by his friends. In the past months, he would have been chomping at the bit to hit the road, wanting to get home to their apartment, to his homework, to get ready for school, get away from the suffocating pressure he couldn't seem to escape.

He felt no rush now. "We'll leave when we're good and ready."

**Author's Note:**

> As always, these stories wouldn't be possible without juxtaposie. Make sure you go show her some love.


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